Hang It Wherever You Want! A Bananartistic Oddity
It is being said that Ponce de Leon brought bananas to Florida in the early 1500s, so Thorstein Veblen (1857-1929) was most probably well acquainted with the long curved fruit. Which, thinking further, the American economist has most probably also eaten. Yet, even for Veblen, bananas would not have been the sought after good to discuss the value of leisure class in economic modernity.
Nevertheless, in 2024, a banana shows us exactly a (misunderstood?!) leisure class. In a dazziling display of wealth and / or status, a nouveau-cripto-riche pays $6.24 million at a New York auction for this banana duct-taped to a wall. The price was reportedly four times the pre-sale estimate (another gobbledygook that would make Veblen envious that he wasn’t in public at the auction). And the show-off didn’t end here: the entrepreneur continued his “performative artwork” by announcing to the public that he will also consume the banana, consumption which also took place in the meantime. A statement at the intersection of wealth, art, and value.
One banana at Walmart costs 0.30¢, so with $6.24, one could buy 20.800.000 bananas. Veblen reborn! For a homo economicus, the calculus is simple: the buyer paid 6.239.999,7 US Dollars in excess. This is beyond economic rationality and functional utility. That banana, a fruit which would perish in several days, had absolutely no relation to its price. The price functions in economics have actually (almost) been canceled by this staggering wealth display.
It cannot be said that paying so much for a banana is an efficient distribution of resources. The money paid has actually not been used for productive uses at all, nor will it encourage producers or distributors of bananas to supply more of the fruits on the market. Because, actually, it is not about the banana here, but about the artistic product of a banana taped to a wall. Will this then encourage other artists to stick bananas on the wall and sell them for millions of dollars? Unlikely too, because the originality of the artistic act has already been consummated in this case. Any new attempt would be nothing but a copy and therefore of little value.
Nor does the exorbitant amount paid reflect an increased demand for such types of “art”. According to economic law, an increased price indicates an increased demand, but it is hard to say that there will be an increased demand (and therefore a market) for this art from now on. The case is so bombastic that it risks derailing even Veblen’s pure law that demand increases as the price rises.
The taped banana did not have any functional or inherent value, but just symbolic value. And, to be added: symbolic value for its buyer. One cannot even speak of a symbolic artistic value (let’s be serious!), but rather of a value that derives, to a large extent, from the media attention given to this acquisition, which the world (especially the economic world) cannot explain (at least not in utilitarian-functional terms). Perhaps, jokingly, only Veblen, though he too would probably have been dismayed at how far his theory could have gotten in reality. Unlikely that anyone would repeat the gesture. Arguably, it was a rather unique, self-serving gesture by the buyer.
So, being clear that the banana was not a common fruit in this case, the question arises if this was a worthy investment in a piece of art in this case? Well, because the buyer ate the banana after the purchase, the piece of art does not exist any longer either.
What are we left with, then? With the image of an entrepreneur who will go down in history because he paid $6.24m for a banana stuck to a wall. Here art isn’t even consumed in museums anymore. Forget the paintings hung by museum walls (forget also the famous ironic saying “Hang it in the Louvre”). Welcome (back) to the mediatic age: art as perceptual image, eager for attention.
