Price of the $120K Duct-Taped Banana Has Gone Up

If you thought that selling banana duct-taped to a wall as "art" for $120,000 was—let's just go for the low-hanging fruit here—bananas, well, Sotheby's would like you to know the price has gone up. The Art Newspaper tackles next month's scheduled auction:

• The backstory: Dial back to 2019, when Maurizio Cattelan duct-taped the aforementioned banana to the aforementioned wall at Art Basel Miami Beach, called it "Comedian," and got $120,000 for it. People lost their ever-loving minds, some guy ate the original banana, another guy said he had the banana idea first, a date in federal court was had, a student ate the banana ... you get the idea.

• Auctioneer predicts big-time inflation: One of three versions of "Comedian" is set to go up for auction on November at Sotheby's New York, which is anticipating a sales price of between $1 million and $1.5 million.
• What's included: Well, a banana, a single roll of duct tape, a certificate of authenticity, and instructions on how to display your duct-taped banana. CNN confirms that neither the banana or duct tape are the original.
• From Sotheby's: "If at its core, 'Comedian' questions the very notion of the value of art, then putting the work at auction ... will be the ultimate realization of its essential conceptual idea—the public will finally have a say in deciding its true value."

(More Maurizio Cattelan stories.)