‘I created a monster’: Sensational banana art still echoes as Art Basel Miami Beach opens
Shunting aside qualms about an art market slump, bazillionaires and the merely rich lined up Wednesday morning as a soft electronic bong signaled the start of the 22nd edition of Art Basel Miami Beach, the main attraction of the annual hometown extravaganza known as Miami Art Week.
The annual fair is all about buying and selling, market trends and the like, and so the big question on almost everyone’s mind on the vast floor of the Miami Beach Convention Center, given mixed success at recent New York auctions and depressed sales, was: Are collectors willing to shell out, and if so, for what? The 285 anxious gallery owners from around the world who fork out tens of thousands for a booth have until Sunday to find out.
The fair is of course also very much about the art, and this year’s version, on an initial survey at Wednesday’s VIP opening, appears to extend the trend away from glitzy, eye-candy frivolity of the fair’s nascent years and towards high-minded questions about the meaning of art, representation and society.
Which leaves plenty of room for humor and fun, too. Including the banana that just keeps on giving.
The banana is back
Five years after a banana taped to an Art Basel Miami Beach gallery booth wall stirred controversy and sensation in and outside the art world, the reverberations are still being felt.
Parisian gallerist Emmanuel Perrotin caught a lot of flack for selling the duct-taped banana for $120,000. Just last month, that work — Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan’s “Comedian”—sold at auction for an eye-popping $6.2 million, evidence that perhaps the right art still commands a high price.
“In a sense, I undersold,” Perrotin told the Miami Herald on Wednesday at his convention center booth. He marveled at the price Chinese billionaire and cryptocurrency entrepreneur Justin Sun paid for the installation at the Nov. 20 Sotheby’s auction in New York.
“It was a symbol of our times,” the gallerist said. “I created a monster.”
Perrotin said he was simply seeking to spur comment and reflection about the history of art. He was not trying to rile people the way some artists do.
“It was not meant to be provocative; it was just a banana on a wall,” Perrotin said. “We didn’t know it would have this power.”
Perrotin also made a confession: In 2019, he ate the first banana that was affixed to the wall when it started to get too ripe, out of sight of curious onlookers. That was before performance artist David Datuna caused a minor scandal when he removed the banana from the wall and consumed it in front of a stunned crowd at the fair.
In what may or may not be a cheeky comment on the art-world banana furor, one fair sponsor, Chiquita Bananas, installed a cart filled with the yellow tropical fruit outside the Grand Ballroom, which hosts the fair’s exclusive collector’s lounge. Those bananas are free.
There was an authentic knockoff of sorts as well —“Clown,” a print and watercolor Cattelan made of the banana to raise money for New York’s New Museum. The edition was produced by New York gallery Carolina Nitsch, which has one at the fair, but kept it in the back room and out of sight in case someone got any ideas. There were 15 unique versions made by Cattelan, but only two remain, the gallery’s Ian Epps said. Price: a relative bargain at $75,000 each.
Meanwhile, Epps said, a performance artist outside the convention center had a sign taped to her head with Cattelan’s name scrawled on it. She was offering the work for one percent of the banana’s auction price, or about $60,000.
Cattelan also sent a new and very different work to this year’s fair. “Meat,” at Gagosian, features images of orchids on wood panels shot through with bullets. The gallery reported Wednesday that the “significant” piece had sold, along with several other works.
“There is an appetite for great things and the market feels like it’s coming back,” uber-gallerist Larry Gagosian said in a statement.
As for Perrotin, he said this time around he’s eschewing high-concept controversy for, among other themes, the joys and trials of motherhood. Painter Danielle Orchard, one of 11 artists featured at his booth, commands a solo wall with several works featuring mothers and infants. Her works range from $10,000 to $300,000, according to gallery spokeswoman Caitlin Merrell.
Perrotin said he wasn’t worried about selling, with works in his booth priced to move at $10,000 to $300,000. All five Orchard paintings sold before the end of the afternoon, the gallery said.
“With our prices in the booth, it’s okay,” Perrotin said. “For the galleries pushing work by living artists for $2 million or $3 million, I feel it is more difficult. But I have no idea.”
Younger collectors, approachable art works
And then there is the Alien creature from the popular sci-fi horror films, fearsome and jet black, and stopping everyone — from collectors to fair janitorial staff — in their tracks. Kneeling like an ancient Egyptian sphinx at Swiss gallery Mai 36’s booth is artist HR Giger’s “Necronom / Alien III.”
Giger was the artist behind the Xenomorph in Ridley Scott’s “Alien” movies. Giger, who died 10 years ago, was not able to finish this sculpture until long after the original “Alien” movies were made because he didn’t have the money, said Henri Gisler, the Mai 36 director. It’s selling for a cool $1 million.
The Alien, famously, is female. The noticeably feminine lips on the alien’s head were modeled after German model Claudia Schiffer, Gisler said. Wolverine-like claws jut from her otherwise delicate hands. A scorpion- like tail protrudes from her bony spine.
“He was a bit outside of the art world, more pop culture and sci-fi,” Gisler said. “But now he is slowly getting back to being taken seriously.”
Whether such pricey pieces will attract buyers in Miami is an open question, as both Art Basel’s parent company and its rival Frieze fairs post multi-million-dollar losses.
Florian Faber, CEO of MCH Group, the holding company that owns Art Basel, told the Herald that although Art Basel has expanded significantly over the past 54 years -- now with four locations worldwide-- the brand remains strong. He doesn’t believe the market is oversaturdated with offerings of art.
“We see a strong identity at all the fairs, and no dilution overall,” Faber said. Miami serves as a magnet for both local collectors and an international crowd from Latin America, he said, explaining, “We see Miami as a melting pot.”
For Miami’s Fredric Snitzer, there was, happily, no art-market pall Wednesday.
Minutes after the 11 a.m. opening, he said, his eponymous gallery had sold all 11 paintings by Miami local and world-renowned artist Hernan Bas. The works ranged in price from $36,000 to $400,000.
“This is an artist in demand all over the world, and he sells,” Snitzer said. “So, I don’t know if you can measure the art market by me.”
Also in the market is the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami’s acquisitions committee, said museum director Alex Gartenfeld. The institution already picked up a piece at satellite fair NADA’s opening on Tuesday, and was looking to buy at the Basel fair as well.
“We bought one yesterday, and we’re buying today,’’ he said, quipping: “We have to support the local economy.”
Veteran gallerist Sean Kelly said it’s clear the conclusion of the U.S. presidential election, regardless of one’s opinion of the result, seems to have freed American collectors to start buying again after months of uncertainty.
“I’m feeling very, very positive,” said Kelly, who sold a number of works early in the show.
“People don’t want to talk politics anymore. They want to move on. For our clientele, that means this,” he added, gesturing to the fairgoers around him.
His gallery, based in New York and Los Angeles, was presenting works priced under $400,000 to make them appealing to the local market.
“In Miami, the collectors are younger and want works that are more approachable,” he said.
What VIPs were into
Overall, there was little frenzy but a solid flow of collectors from Latin America, Europe and the U.S. wandering through galleries that brought a wide range of works, from $750 watercolors on 3 x 5 cards by New York artist Adam Putnam at the P.P.O.W. to a 16-foot-high steel and rubber swing by Mark di Suvero.
By late afternoon, the fair’s organizers reported a roster of sales that include a Keith Haring painting on glass, at Gladstone Gallery, for $2 million; a Sam Gilliam painting at Pace Gallery for $1 million; and at Thaddaeus Ropac, a Robert Rauschenberg silkscreen, “Everglade (Borealis),” for $2.3 million and a George Baselitz painting for 2.5 million Euros.
Paintings and two-dimensional works dominated, many by women artists both celebrated and long-neglected. Textiles and ceramics are more visible than in years past.
“Textile art, women artists, it’s all arrived,” said Jackie Gross-Kellogg, a volunteer guide from Key Biscayne who leads tours of Art Basel Miami Beach every year for ArtNexus magazine, a Latin American publication.
A vast bronze snake-in-a-basket by Wangechi Mutu at Gladstone sold early in the show.
“People are craving trace of the hand,” said Lorie Mertes, director of Miami’s Locust Projects. “The pendulum swings. Everything was so process-driven. Now we’re back to elemental touch.”
This story was originally published December 4, 2024 at 4:09 PM.