The Fifth Desk · Evaluation
Act I · The Map
Maurizio Cattelan · a fresh banana fixed to a wall with a single strip of grey duct tape, with the certificate of authenticity and the instructions that pass with each edition and authorise the owner to replace the banana and the tape · dimensions variable · 2019, first shown at Art Basel Miami Beach on the stand of Galerie Perrotin, December 2019 · an edition of three · the unit scored is the work in its three editions as one: the banana is replaced by its certificate’s terms, and what stands is the instruction and the configuration it produces, not any banana that has hung under the title
Mode
Readymade made perishable: a fresh banana taped to a wall and carried by a certificate that authorises its replacement, an edition of a thing that rots
Mythos
The fool and the jester paid by the court he mocks; the banana of slapstick; the still life of fruit, its vanitas cut short; a small resurrection by decree
Phase
First shown at Art Basel Miami Beach in December 2019, in an edition of three; the banana eaten at the fair on 7 December 2019 and replaced; an edition sold at Sotheby’s, New York, in November 2024, and its banana eaten by the buyer
Presentation
A banana fixed to a white wall by one strip of grey duct tape across it on a slight diagonal, dimensions variable, fruit and tape replaced under the certificate
Register
Deadpan comedy: a gag, a shrug and an argument, without transport
Scale
One fruit, one strip of tape, one document, three editions, and a fair
Governing Proposition
A fresh banana is fixed to a white wall at an art fair with one strip of grey duct tape and called Comedian. It will brown in days and be replaced, and what the owner of each of its three editions holds is a certificate and the instructions that authorise the replacement. The wager of the work is that in the market of its moment the work is the paper, not the thing: the material is a consumable bought anew for very little, the attestation is what is sold, and the price is part of what is shown. Its afterlife has tested the wager twice in public, by eating the banana, and both times the work was untouched.
Act II · The Essay
Movement I
In December 2019, at Art Basel Miami Beach, on the stand of Galerie Perrotin, Maurizio Cattelan showed a fresh banana fixed to a white wall with a single strip of grey duct tape. Its title was Comedian. It was made in an edition of three, and its dimensions are variable. What passes to an owner with each edition is not a banana, which browns within days, but a certificate of authenticity and the instructions that authorise the owner to replace the banana and the tape. The materials are a fruit and a strip of tape, and both are replaced.
The work scored is that: Comedian in its three editions, as one work. The work is the instruction and the configuration it produces, not any one banana. Every banana that has hung on a wall under the title has been a consumable, and none of them was the work. What stands where the fruit has gone is the certificate’s terms, and the configuration they produce whenever an owner buys a banana and a roll of tape. The angle and the height of the fruit may vary from version to version. The paper does not.
The parts are four, the banana, the tape, the certificate and the title, with the place of showing as a fifth, and each is required. Without the banana’s perishability nothing has to be replaced, and the certificate has nothing to do. Without the certificate there is a banana on a wall that anyone can make, which is the work’s joke and its proof at once. Without the tape the gesture of attachment goes, cheap and provisional, the way a notice is pinned. Without the title the deadpan has no frame, and without the fair and the price the work tests nothing. Much of that necessity is inherited, and the inheritance is named below.
Movement II
On 7 December 2019 the performance artist David Datuna took the banana from the wall at the fair and ate it. He called the act “Hungry Artist”. A fresh banana was taped up in its place, and the gallery soon took the piece off view because of the crowds. The eating was meant as an intervention, and it confirmed the work. Nothing had been taken that the work had not already given up: the banana was always going to be replaced, and the paper that made it the work was not on the wall.
That is the work’s law, and every element obeys it. The banana rots in days and the certificate lasts; the material is disposable and the attestation is the work. The tape is the cheapest attachment there is. The title calls the thing a joke. The price is set against the cost of a piece of fruit. The two most distant elements, a perishable and a document, sit under one rule, and so does everything that has happened to the work since. Nothing breaks it. But the law governs one fruit, one strip of tape and one document, and the range it holds, though sharp, is small.
What the work brings into the open can be stated, and it holds. That in the art market of its moment the work is the paper, not the thing: value lives in a certificate, and the material is a consumable the owner buys anew. That an art fair will pay a high price for a gesture whose cost is cents, and that the price is part of what is shown. And, through the eating, that the public now meets art as a spectacle to be photographed, mocked and eaten, while the eating changes nothing because the paper survives it. The central disclosure, that art is a status conferred by designation, was made in 1917. Here the market stands where the institution stood.
Movement III
The title refuses elevation in advance. The register is the comic: the gag of the banana, the slapstick of the peel. There is a small visual pleasure, a curve of yellow on a white wall crossed by a diagonal of grey tape, a clean graphic sign that photographs well, and it was the sign that travelled. Before the object the response is a laugh, a shrug or an argument, not transport, beauty or dread. The crowds at Miami Beach were drawn by the scandal and the price. The work has no summit, and it was built to have none.
The title also names the maker. The comedian is the clown and the fool, the court jester who mocks the king while being paid by him, which is Cattelan’s settled persona and the work’s relation to the fair that showed it. Other patterns are summoned around the fruit: the banana as the oldest prop of slapstick and as a sexual joke; the still life of fruit, the vanitas in which ripeness carries the sign of decay. These are evoked. The one moment that comes near something larger is the darker reading of the browning banana, and the instructions cut it short: the fruit is replaced before it can rot, so that the vanitas the still life would have shown is ended by contract.
One pattern is built. The fruit dies and is renewed by decree, again and again, in each edition: a cycle of perishing and replacement that the work physically enacts, a small myth of resurrection by paperwork. The particular stays wholly particular, a banana from a shop, and it acquires little more than its joke and that cycle. Reception has added much, the meme, the readings of a banana republic, the eating as a kind of communion, but that is brought by viewers, not constructed by the work.
Movement IV
Behind the work stand Duchamp’s readymade; the instruction and the certificate as the work, in Sol LeWitt’s wall drawings; the perishable replenished by its owner, in Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s candy spills; and Cattelan’s own earlier works, a gallerist taped to a wall and a gold toilet. The departure is to put a perishable readymade with a replacement certificate into the most commercial setting there is, priced as a major object, and to let the joke be the market’s. The turn is in setting and tone. The form was a century old in its premise and decades old in its mechanism, and the stake was ridicule, at a moment when ridicule could only enlarge the man who risked it.
Within those terms the form is the instrument of what is said. A banana cast in another material would be a sculpture that stays; only a real banana makes the owner buy the material anew and makes the certificate the work. Duct tape, not a pin or a frame, makes the attachment look temporary and cheap, which is the argument about cost. A wall at a fair, not in a gallery, makes the price part of the form. But the visible form is almost arbitrary within those terms, any banana, any angle, any strip; what the work knows can be said whole in a sentence; and it reaches most of its public as a photograph, without loss.
The making is a short set of decisions with no hand. The choice of a banana, the most comic and most common of fruits, a form that reads at once as a sign; the tape across it on a slight diagonal, which turns a fruit into a graphic mark; the placing on a clean wall at a fair; the title. And, the real craft, the certificate and its terms of replacement, which make an edition of a thing that rots. These decisions are exact and load-bearing. But almost nothing is made. The visual decision is one strip of tape, and the device of a record that outlives its object belonged to Fountain (8.0) a century before it belonged to this work.
Movement V
In November 2024 an edition was sold at Sotheby’s in New York to the crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun, who later ate the banana in public. A second eating, by the owner this time, took the fruit and left the work as it was, as the first had. The sale made the work a market event and its afterlife a second round of the same argument. Its reach is very wide: the most discussed work of its year, a meme, a byword for the absurdity of contemporary art. But its force is a restatement of 1917 and of the certificate works that followed, pared to its least, and no line of artists is known to start from it. Much of its reach is as the thing derided or imitated in jest.
Seven years is too short for the evidence the work’s depth would need. The questions it raises are real: what an edition is when the edition is a document; whether eating it is vandalism, performance or completion; whether it criticises the market or is its emblem. But the discourse is driven by events, and each event repeats the first meaning; the banana once seen is seen. It stands below Girl with Balloon (7.0), a stencil of 2002 with seventeen more years behind it; below For the Love of God (7.5), which pressed a like case with material made at a new scale; and well below Fountain (8.0), whose premise it restates a century later with less made in it and no time behind it.
What holds it in Tier II is what the work refuses and what it leaves out. It refuses elevation, a built myth beyond its one cycle, and a hand. It holds the market, the body that eats, the institution of art and comedy as a social order, by one gesture; it holds no person, no family, no history, no nature beyond the fruit and no world beyond the wall. Its form has survived its matter by design, and its surface is fixed to the fair of 2019 and the money of the 2020s. Somewhere a fresh banana is taped to a white wall, and the paper that made it the work is somewhere else.
Act III · The Twelve
Judged on the parts, which are four, with the place of showing as a fifth, and the subtractive test is severe. Take away the banana’s perishability and nothing has to be replaced, so the certificate has nothing to do. Take away the certificate and there is a banana on a wall that anyone can make, which is the work’s joke and its proof at once. Take away the tape and the gesture of attachment goes, cheap and provisional, the way a notice is pinned. Take away the title and the deadpan has no frame. Take away the fair and the price, and the work tests nothing. What gives: the angle and the height, which any version may vary; and much of the necessity is Duchamp’s, inherited rather than compelled here.
Score: 7.5 / 10
What it brings into the open can be stated. That in the art market of its moment the work is the paper, not the thing: value lives in a certificate, and the material is a consumable the owner buys anew. That an art fair will pay a high price for a gesture whose cost is cents, and that the price is part of what is shown. And, through its afterlife, that the public now meets art as a spectacle to be photographed, mocked and eaten, while the eating changes nothing because the paper survives it. These hold. Held where it is because the central disclosure, that art is a status conferred by designation, was made in 1917; here the market stands where the institution stood, a real but secondary uncovering.
Score: 7.3 / 10
Elevation is refused, and the title says so: the register is the comic, the gag of the banana and the slapstick of the peel. There is a small visual pleasure, a curve of yellow on a white wall crossed by a diagonal of grey tape, a clean graphic sign that photographs well, and it was the sign that circulated. But before the object the response is a laugh, a shrug or an argument, not transport, beauty or dread, and the crowds at Miami Beach came for the scandal and the price. The one approach to something larger is the browning fruit, a faint vanitas, and the instructions cut it short by replacing the banana before it can rot. That is what holds the axis lowest of the twelve: no summit at all, by design.
Score: 5.2 / 10
Archetype is evoked in several directions and built in one. Evoked: the clown and the fool of the title, the jester who mocks the court that pays him, which is Cattelan’s settled persona; the banana as the oldest prop of slapstick and as a sexual joke; the still life of fruit, in which ripeness carries the sign of decay. Built: the cycle of perishing and replacement, the fruit that dies and is renewed by decree, which is the one structure the work physically enacts, a small myth of resurrection by paperwork. The particular stays wholly particular, one shop banana, and acquires little more than its joke and that cycle. The meme, the political readings and the eating as communion were brought by viewers, not built by the work.
Score: 6.4 / 10
The inheritance: the readymade, from Duchamp; the instruction and the certificate as the work, from Sol LeWitt’s wall drawings; the replenished perishable, from Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s candy spills; and Cattelan’s own earlier works, a gallerist taped to a wall and a gold toilet. The departure is to put a perishable readymade with a replacement certificate into the most commercial setting there is, priced as a major object, and to let the joke be the market’s. The turn is in setting and tone more than in form, which was a century old in its premise and decades old in its mechanism. The stake was real and modest: ridicule, at a moment when ridicule was the artist’s currency and could only enlarge him. A wager placed partly on a proven path.
Score: 6.6 / 10
Would a different form change what the work knows? In its essentials, yes. A cast banana is a sculpture that stays; only a real one makes the owner buy the material anew and makes the certificate the work. Duct tape, not a pin or a frame, makes the attachment look temporary and cheap, which is the argument about cost. A wall at a fair, not in a gallery, makes the price part of the form. So the form is the instrument of what is said. Held at the floor and no higher because the visible form is almost arbitrary within those terms, any banana, any angle, any strip; because the knowledge can be stated whole in a sentence; and because the work reaches most of its public as a photograph, without loss.
Score: 7.0 / 10
Evidence over promise: seven years, so the axis can only be forecast. The questions raised are real: what an edition is when the edition is a document; whether eating it is vandalism, performance or completion; whether it criticises the market or is its emblem; what the sale of 2024 says about new money and the price of a joke. But return to the object yields nothing new: the banana once seen is seen. The discourse is driven by events, an eating, a sale, a second eating, and each repeats the first meaning. Much of the return concerns the art market rather than this thing, and whether the discussion outlasts the market of 2019 to 2024 is not yet shown. A well forecast, and a shallow one.
Score: 6.3 / 10
Published, so force and reach are scored together, in the field of the international art world and art market of the late 2010s. The intrinsic force is slight: not a reorganisation of what a work can be, since the readymade, the certificate and the replenished perishable were all established, but a pointed restatement, the gesture pared to its least. Achieved reach is scored with intrinsic force: the most discussed work of its year, a meme, a byword for the absurdity of contemporary art, and in 2024 a market event, with a reach in discourse that continues. It redirected little practice: no line of artists is known to start from it, and much of its reach is as the thing derided or imitated in jest. Wide reach on narrow force.
Score: 6.8 / 10
Weighed on form, then presence, then fabric. Form: whole and legible in all three editions, because the work was built to survive the loss of its matter; the certificate carries it, and the eatings have shown that losing the banana takes nothing from the form. Presence: seven years, about as wide as any work of its decade, in the press, the art world and the auction room; fame and price are presence, not proof of permanence. Fabric: wholly perishable by design and replaced many times, which the work’s own law makes the smallest charge. The span is short, and the axis is held near the top of what it allows, and below that top for a surface fixed to its moment: the joke is bound to the fair of 2019 and the money of the 2020s.
Score: 7.6 / 10
Read to the same anchors as every medium: command of the medium. Here the making is a short set of decisions with no hand. Credited: the choice of a banana, the most comic and most common of fruits, a form that reads at once as a sign; the tape across it on a slight diagonal, which turns a fruit into a graphic mark; the placing on a clean wall at a fair; the title; and, the real craft, the certificate and its terms of replacement, which make an edition of a thing that rots. These are exact and load-bearing. But almost nothing is made: the visual decision is one strip of tape, and the devices are borrowed from Fountain (8.0), whose record was arranged to survive the loss of its object.
Score: 6.5 / 10
Take the two most distant elements: the banana, which rots in days, and the certificate, which lasts and is sold at auction. They obey one law: the material is disposable and the attestation is the work. The tape is the cheapest attachment; the title calls it a joke; the price is set against the cost. The afterlife obeys the same law exactly: every eating, Datuna’s at the fair in 2019 and Sun’s after the sale of 2024, removes the banana and leaves the work untouched. Nothing breaks it. Held where it is because narrowness is not coherence: the law governs one fruit, one strip of tape and one document, and the range between its farthest elements, though sharp, is small.
Score: 7.6 / 10
The orders held are few, and held in one gesture. The market and money, in the price as material. Food and the body, in a thing made to be eaten and eaten in public. Labour and global trade, by implication only, in a fruit grown far away and sold cheaply; the readings of a banana republic lie outside the work, brought by viewers. The institution of art, in the fair and the gallery. Comedy as a social order. They are integrated, since one act touches them all at once. What holds the axis below its own floor is what is absent: no person, no family, no history, no nature beyond the fruit, no sacred order, no world beyond the wall. The figure describes the form.
Score: 5.8 / 10
Act IV · The Reckoning
6.7 / 10 · Final Average
Placement: Tier II · Accomplished
Strongest Dimensions
The Imperishable and The Inner Law at 7.6, then The Inevitable at 7.5 and The Unconcealment at 7.3. A form built to survive the loss of its matter, which two public eatings have left untouched; one law, the material disposable and the attestation the work, that every element and every later event obeys; parts each required to make the argument, the perishable fruit, the cheap tape, the paper, the title and the fair; and a disclosure that can be stated and holds, that in the market of its moment the work is the paper, not the thing.
Limiting Dimension
The Sublime at 5.2: elevation refused by title and register, the response a laugh, and the one faint vanitas cut short by the instruction to replace the fruit before it rots. Next above it, The Encompassed at 5.8, below its own floor: the market, the body, the institution and comedy held in one gesture, with no person, no family, no history and no world beyond the wall. Then The Bottomless Well at 6.3 and The Archetypal Deep at 6.4: seven years of events that repeat the first meaning, and one small cycle built among myths evoked. With The Made at 6.5 and The Swerve at 6.6 they are one fact: the premise of 1917 and the mechanisms of the decades after it, pared to their least and set in a fair, with almost nothing made. The figures hold it in Tier II.
The Necessity Cap is met exactly: The Inevitable at 7.5 against a threshold of 7.5. The Coherence Floor is unmet: The Made at 6.5 falls below 7.0, while The Living Form meets it exactly at 7.0 and The Inner Law clears it at 7.6. The Epochal Gate is unmet on all five: The Imperishable at 7.6, The Unconcealment at 7.3, Pressure on Tradition at 6.8, The Swerve at 6.6 and The Archetypal Deep at 6.4 each fall short of the bar of 8.5. The Universal Minimum is unmet at eight of the eleven axes it counts, from The Unconcealment at 7.3 and The Living Form at 7.0 down through Pressure on Tradition at 6.8, The Swerve at 6.6, The Made at 6.5, The Archetypal Deep at 6.4 and The Bottomless Well at 6.3 to The Sublime at 5.2, all below 7.5; only The Inevitable, The Imperishable and The Inner Law reach it. The Megethos Floor is unmet: The Encompassed at 5.8 falls short of its own floor of 6.0 by two tenths. One of the five summit conditions is met. The twelve sum to 80.6, an average of 6.72 that displays 6.7, in the band of Tier II, short of the 7.0 at which Tier III begins and of the 9.0 that the summit requires.
Basis · a reading from knowledge of the object and its public record, not from a viewing. The work scored is Comedian, 2019, by Maurizio Cattelan, as one work in its three editions: a fresh banana fixed to a wall with a single strip of grey duct tape, dimensions variable, together with the certificate of authenticity and the instructions that pass with each edition and authorise the owner to replace the banana and the tape. The work is the instruction and the configuration it produces, not any one banana; every banana that has hung under the title is a consumable, replaced by the certificate’s terms, and none is part of what is scored. First shown at Art Basel Miami Beach in December 2019, on the stand of Galerie Perrotin. The bananas eaten, by David Datuna at the fair on 7 December 2019 and by Justin Sun after the sale of an edition at Sotheby’s, New York, in November 2024, the performances that consumed them, the sale records and Cattelan’s earlier works are context and evidence of reach and survival, and are not scored. The only words quoted are the title and Datuna’s name for his act. The certificate’s wording is known only by report and is not quoted, and its terms on how often the fruit is replaced and at what height and angle it is taped are not stated. Facts that could not be verified are not given, among them the prices of the editions in 2019 and in 2024, any artist’s proofs, the present homes of the editions and whether one entered a museum collection, other eatings reported since 2019, where and for how much the banana taped up for the sale of 2024 was bought, and whether the artist tried the work first in other materials.