“Why does something have value?” muses Charles Stewart. We’re talking bananas — specifically one that was duct-taped to a wall and sold by Sotheby’s for $6.2mn. The fruit “was a symbol”, the auction house chief executive says of the piece, from artist Maurizio Cattelan, which generated worldwide astonishment and much hand-wringing over the meaning (or otherwise) of art. “What is the value of that symbol?” Stewart asks. “And what is the symbolism of the value?”
What, indeed. Sometimes, though, a banana is just a banana, as the Chinese-born crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun proved when he bought the piece and promptly ate it. It wasn’t even the first banana to be stuck to the wall: Stewart reveals it had to be replaced every few days before the sale to avoid it turning too brown.
Multimillion-dollar bananas one day, Andy Warhols, Old Masters and Freddie Mercury’s moustache comb (on the block with an estimated price of £500; sold for an unreal £152,400) the next: such is the life of Sotheby’s American boss. Outside there is war in Ukraine and the Middle East; Donald Trump’s tariffs have spooked global markets; Brexit has dented the UK economy. But inside his office on London’s New Bond ...
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