Justin Sun Ate “Comedian”, but it’s not Funny

On November 20, 2024 an art event that soon scandalized the world unravelled at the Sotheby’s auction of art works in New York. The Chinese Cryptocurrency billionaire, Justin Sun bid for the Italian Conceptual artist Maurizio Cattelan’s work titled ‘Comedian’ for a whopping sum of Rs. 52 Crores (6.24 million US Dollars). The price by itself is nothing new to Sotheby’s but the acquisition had an element of the bizarre. All madness broke loose because ‘Comedian’ was nothing but a ripe banana stuck on the surface with a duct tape.

Maurizio Cattelan is not new to scandals. He had made a golden commode and offered it to the US President Donald Trump during his first term. Cattelan has challenged the cultural, political and religious establishments with his crazy conceptual art works. ‘Comedian’ became the eye of the storm when he made it in 2017 and claimed that it was a pure work of imagination and an idea that completely belonged to him.

“You had a banana at home and a duct tape also. But you never thought you could make a work of art out of it. As I have done it, the copyright is mine,” Catellan allegedly told a reporter in 2017. Then a performance artist ate the banana and later in 2023, during an exhibition a young art viewer snatched it and ate it. Both times Catellan said that nothing affected his work because it could be renewed as per his ‘guidance.’

People thought ‘Comedian’ was a crazy piece of art but the auction results made the world itself go crazy. On 29th November 2024, after nine days of his buying ‘Comedian’, in a press conference specially called for the event, Sun ate the most expensive banana in the world.

Comedy of errors, isn’t it? No. Let me give my perspective. The Rs. 52Cr deal is a comedy of an economic strategy that has a huge impact on the global aesthetics and art market.

I used comedy in a Shakespearean sense; it’s a comic thing, of course, but it has its own complications, a series of misunderstandings, doppelganger-ing, mistaken identities, heartburns and eventual solutions.

The Comedian deal and the eating of ‘the’ banana by the buyer (I don’t call Justin Sun an art collector) highlights the idea of NFT (Non Fungible Tokens), an alternative economy that does away with not only currency but also the object of desire, which could be bought by the currency.

Cryptocurrency, as the word suggests, is cryptic, which means it yields meaning only when it is deciphered. That means it’s the idea of gold reserves (which is more imagined in the federal reserves of any country than actually compensated and stocked) against the transaction of currency in the market. Simply put, the paper note is guaranteed by the governments with gold.

What about the scenario where both the currency and gold are notional? That’s the idea of cryptocurrency. It runs in numbers. In the previous years it was a scan like the transatlantic bank frauds where the time zone changes across the Atlantic gave the fraudsters in the banking system could syphon enormous funds during night hours to a country where it was a working day. Overnight, they could invest millions of dollars in another country’s stock exchange and real profits and replace the transacted capital amount by morning in their parent banks!

As an aside, I would say, in the recent hot movie ‘Lucky Bhasker’, the hero, a bank employee, essayed by DQ (Dulquer Salmaan) does exactly the same, but with hard cash from the bank.

The cryptocurrency market has been through ups and downs over the last few months. Now, Justin Sun has brought it back to focus by buying and eating a banana worth INR 52 Cr!

The work Comedian exists as an idea that could be bought and sold! Someone else could buy it for Rs.100 Cr later on, then get a banana delivered home by Blinkit delivery boy, duct tape it on his drawing room wall, if need be! Otherwise, ah, he could ‘own’ the idea, still copyrighted by/on Cattelan. Metaphorically speaking, Catellan becomes the federal reserve that guarantees currency with gold.

Now, let’s turn to global aesthetics! What will happen, if more and more collectors start believing in collecting ideas rather than objects? Then artists would make works of art with any object that is perishable. The rising clothes-embroidery trend in art foretells such a transition. Does it? Wait and watch. By shredding his work Banksy has started the trend. Now Justin Sun has consolidated it.

I may sound like a doomsday prophet for many who believe in materiality of art. But read my flagging out in relation with the growing tendency of minimal architecture among the rich in the rich countries. They are rich but want to live a minimal life. That means, in their minimal architecture there are no walls for paintings and no room for sculptures. But they can buy ideas! Ideas don’t need space.

When the famous British artist, Damien Hirst started off with his scandalous pickling of a whale, he titled it, ‘The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living.’ Now you read the title of his 2008 direct auction attempt. It was, ‘Beautiful Inside My Head Forever.’

Does it ring something? Beauty is going to be an idea living in your mind. The new economy, even if it is based on consumption, which means over production, over distribution and over consumption, would eventually make people enjoy ideas rather than objects. Your next holiday will be at home, visiting the Alps through virtual reality, for half the price of actual flying, minus all those hazards of actual moving.

Do I sound cynical? A few years ago, we found it strange to buy stuff online. Jeff Bezos and the team taught us how to do it. Now we are preparing to go to the moon with Elon Musk!

To conclude, Justin Sun’s entry in the art market has some political dimensions too. He has already invested 30 million dollars (Rs. 3 Cr) with the Trump administration.

Given this context, museums will have a tough time balancing between objects and NFT art.

Watch the full auction procedure here: