Why the duct-taped banana is a true work of art

Oscar Wilde said all art is quite useless. Many disagree but at a level of human necessity, he was correct. You can’t eat art. You can’t build your house out of it. You can’t burn it for fuel (at least not for long, anyway). So it’s kind of like gold in that sense. Its only value is the value we place on it.

Last week, the value of US$6million was placed on a work of art consisting of a banana-duct taped to a wall. (Okay, maybe you can eat art).

What makes this a true work of art in late 2024 is that it is quite simply stupid. It’s a stupid price for a stupid work. We can all agree on this. It’s simply stupid.

One of the cures for ethylene glycol (or antifreeze) poisoning is to get the patient drunk and keep them drunk. Stay with me here; I’m going to make a connection.

Ethylene glycol on its own will not kill you. The problem is the liver will convert it into chemicals which will kill you.

However, the liver also prioritises the chemicals it processes. Ethanol, or drinking alcohol, is a much simpler chemical than ethylene glycol and the liver processes the simpler toxins first. By getting the patient medically drunk on ethanol, the liver spends all its time processing the ethanol, and the ethylene glycol passes through the body unprocessed. If successful, the patient lives do to another stupid thing another day.

I wish to present the theory that the liver is not the only organ which processes the simpler things first.

We live in a world full of relentless, toxic stupidity.

We see Israel bombing hospitals and murdering children in the name of self defence and there are people willing to accept this logic even when the stated objective is one that can only be described as genocide.

At the same time, it’s somehow controversial that Ukraine would defend itself against a hostile invasion by a notionally far more powerful nation. In the world I grew up in, powerful countries consuming smaller ones was considered bad. Then again, taking the wider view of history, maybe this value was just a 20^th century blip, but I’m holding onto it.

Meanwhile, America has elected a carnival clown as its leader for a second time. And said clown wants to put the guy who became a multi-billionaire from government contracts in charge of cutting government waste and a science denier in charge of the country’s health.

Each of the three paragraphs above contain so many complex layers of unfathomable stupid as to leave the normal, compassionate human brain beachballing.

It’s much easier to process the stupidity of an artist duct-taping a banana to a wall and getting someone else to pay $6million for it.

I’m sure there are people willing to justify the rationality of this, but they are far fewer and further between than those willing to accept the stupidity of Israel, Russia and Trump.

That makes it easier for us all to process too. In a world where even objective reality is somehow up for debate, we can comfort ourselves that we can all at least agree that paying a stupid sum for a stupid banana taped to a stupid wall is stupid.

For sure, it’s a sad indictment of us all on many levels, but this is a piece of stupid we can all process without killing ourselves and for a moment, the really toxic stupid does us a little less harm.

And that is art.