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A fruit seller won’t get a penny after an artist sold one of his 20p bananas for a whopping £5 million.
Yeah, sure, supermarkets might exist, and a chocolate bar can make for a far more fun on-the-go snack, but sometimes it’s much nicer to pick up a piece of fruit from your local.
And in this case, a simple piece of fruit became a pricey piece of art.
It all started on a street in Manhattan, New York, where Shah Alam runs a little fruit stand outside of Sotheby’s. You know, that famous auction house often used to flog things for millions.
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The 74-year-old sells bananas for 20p each, or 79p a bunch, and sold one in particular, which ended up in an art piece by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan.
Alam wasn’t aware of any of this though, so The New York Times tracked him down to explain what had come of one of his nanas.
Just a simple cheap bit of fruit, the banana was duct-taped to a wall to become part of Cattelan’s piece of conceptual art called ‘Comedian’.
It was then sold as a part of that by an unnamed collector for the massive price of £5 million. Founder of a cryptocurrency platform, Justin Sun, bought the piece, except not quite the actual piece.
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Basically, Sun bought a certificate that gives him the right to also duct-tape a banana to the wall and then call it Comedian.
But still, it was Alam’s banana that ended up being the OG for the piece to get sold.
The widower from Bangladesh has been living in the US since 2007 and works at the stall four days a week in 12-hour shifts.
When The New York Times spoke to him and he learnt just how much the art piece with the banana ended up raking in, he cried: “I am a poor man. I have never had this kind of money; I have never seen this kind of money.”
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A Sotheby’s spokesperson confirmed said banana was sold for the Comedian.
When Cattelan heard about Alam’s situation, he said: “The reaction of the banana vendor moves me deeply, underscoring how art can resonate in unexpected and profound ways.
“However, art, by its nature, does not solve problems — if it did, it would be politics.”
Well, art’s harsh, it seems. Now if you'll excuse me, I have some fruit to go and purchase.
Jess Battison