The World is Bananas: Modern Art and World Hunger

Many of you have probably heard and shaken your heads over the recent art sensation, or scandal, that took place at the Art Basel show in Miami, Florida last month. Famous Italian artist, and “jester” (“Maurizio Cattelan” Guggenheim) of the modern art world Maurizio Cattelan, presented his piece “Comedian”: a banana duct-taped to a wall. A real banana, already browning with age held to a plain wall of the gallery with one piece of gray tape.

The piece was sold for $120,000. Or rather, the “idea” was sold, as the first banana was eaten soon after by artist David Datuna, and replaced, which would have soon been necessary anyway for within a few days it would have rotted into mush and fallen from the wall.

You probably have lots of questions about “Comedian,” the artist Maurizio Cattelan, and the wealthy buyers who purchased “certificates of authenticity” to accompany their own bananas and tape. I certainly do. The radio hosts who first informed me of the debacle had their own questions, including the very relevant point of “How does the new owner take the piece home? Does he peel the banana off the wall, or does he get to carve out that section of wall because technically it’s part of the artwork?” Would the owner carefully remove the banana and its securing tape, place them gently in a lined box or briefcase with a combination lock made for valuables, handcuff it to his wrist before climbing into his limo or helicopter? There were so many questions about the purchase and transfer of “Comedian,” questions beyond the initial confounded “Why?”

"Comedian" : Jones, Jonathon "Don't make fun of..." article, photograph by Rhona Wise

Why? It’s a question we ask often in this turbulent life.

I asked myself “Why?” when I first heard of, then read about, Cattelan, his most recent piece “Comedian,” and the three top buyers. Upon further research I understand that Cattelan is known for his sacrilegious, macabre, and provocative artworks which poke fun at himself as much as anything else, including the very concept of modern art. He compares himself to Cassandra, princess of Troy, who was dismissed as a crazy babbler for her warning prophecies against Troy’s destruction. No one heeded her and Troy was destroyed by the Greeks. Whether Cattelan is warning us against destruction at our own hands I’m not sure, and I still don’t know what he hopes to gain from “Comedian.” I don’t know why the Art Basel would permit the work, a term that doesn’t even seem fitting to describe a banana duct-taped to a wall, I don’t know why anyone considered the work worth anything beyond the minimal production costs (one banana and a roll of Duck Tape), or why anyone would meet the asking price. For yes, indeed, Cattelan did include an asking price with the title of his piece. I wonder whether he laughed when his demand was met or whether he sighed at the continued foolishness of man.

I wonder if Cattelan wonders, as I do over and over again, why there should be such disparity in the world. Why one average banana and one average piece of tape should cause such an [expensive] stir while millions of children go hungry. Why there are VIPs who spend hundreds of thousands, millions, of dollars on frivolities, on nonsense, such as modern art like the “Comedian” or canvases painted with two blocks of color, while the common poor choose between medicine or food. Why are there even such persons as “Very Important People”? Why are some of us worthy and others disposable?

Why? Why? Why?

If you are like me these questions make you mad.

You move beyond bewilderment into anger when reading of the “Comedian” debacle, when you see a woman sheltering beneath an overpass, or a man holding a cardboard sign on the median in front of a shopping center. You get mad when students throw away unopened snacks and unbitten apples in the cafeteria trash barrels, when children complain that their phone isn’t the latest model or their car doesn’t have seatback screens. You get so angry sometimes that you pound your fists and cry.

Recently I got mad looking at photos of a beautiful second grader standing in her house. The floor is dirt. The walls are plastic USAID tarp patched with rice sacks. The roof is cracked scraps of rusted tin. In the one-room space there is a sagging bed and a table piled with clothes and cookware.

The smiling second grader stands with reddish-tinged hair pulled into erratic pigtails, hands folded in front of her, legs scuffed with dust, feet bare. She has said the flimsy roof leaks so when it rains the floor becomes mud. She lives with her grandmother, mother, and two brothers. No one works.

Usually the girl attends school and eats a good meal five days a week. For two and a half months her school was closed as political protests locked down the country, enforced by patrolling gangsters who forbid schools and business to function. To appease the gangsters and yet serve the students, the school compromised with a Saturday program: children came at 8:00, were fed breakfast, prayed and sang together, listened to a Bible story, played games, and ate a midday meal of rice and beans, departing in small groups around 1:00. The program was held at a private home and children attended in street clothes. It wasn’t much but a few hours on Saturday was better than nothing. The second grader had attended the latest Saturday program and received eagerly an extra plate of rice and beans. She wolfed down the heaping portion and then promptly threw it up again. She sobbed in embarrassment.

Why? Was there too much food in her shrunken stomach? Was the food eaten too quickly? Did she fear that this could be her last meal? Did she feel guilty that she had wasted all that food? Was she ashamed for showing weakness before her peers?

The answer is YES to all of the above.

The real question is why this beautiful little girl should be so hungry. Why should she and her family live in a tent-house? Why should they struggle for food? Why should she be barred from school and her guardians from work?

Why should one person drop $120,000.00 on a rotting banana while an entire family cannot afford a $25.00 bag of rice to feed them for a week?

All these why’s make me furious.

Furious like the day I heard the gangsters had threatened our students to keep out of school. Furious like when I saw photos of a first grader’s twiggy arms and legs framing his little pot stomach (signs of acute malnutrition.) Furious like when a four-year-old walked the two miles halfway to school on the heels of a neighbor. Like when the mother sent her fevered kindergartner to school because there was medicine at the school (ibuprofen.) Like when a third grader’s father came asking for food at the director’s house, hands held out in supplication from his bony frame. Like when a kindergartener’s mother nearly fainted in the office because she’d given her portions to her children and eaten nothing for two days. Like when a second grader endured an untreated broken arm for three days because he’d been taught not to complain. There is much that makes me angry. Much of that anger has a common source: poverty.

Shelley Jean is co-founder of Apparent Project and founder of Papillon Enterprises in Haiti, organizations dedicated to orphan prevention through job creation, providing work so parents can provide for their children. Shelley understands this anger.

“Poverty is evil,” she writes in her book Shelley in Haiti. “Poverty destroys. It makes people do things they wouldn’t do, and it kills…We were not meant to live in poverty” (Jean 146.)

And yet so many do live in poverty. Two thousand years ago Jesus promised that we would always have the poor among us, and we do. There are so many who cannot afford sufficient food, medical care, or housing; they lack what the average First Worlder considers basic necessities. Meanwhile, us First Worlders are wrapping up the Holiday Season. For the first time in four years, I’m wrapping up the Season as well, having been present through Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s.

Holidays are tough. The extravagance of decorations, festivities, gifts, and food is tough. Once you’ve seen the dirt floor and tarp and rice sack walls of a second grader’s one room house, once you’ve seen the malnourished twig limbs of a first grader and the hollowed cheeks of the fourth grader, you can’t enjoy First World holidays as you once did. In the bliss of ignorance and gluttony.

Instead when you enter the department store you think how much comfort those soft blankets and towels could lend those in leaky mountain shacks. You consider how the soaps and lotions could ease irritated skin and prevent scabies. How those toys could light up hunger-dimmed eyes.

You sit down to share a meal with family and imagine how many hungry could be fed by the bounty. How many could enjoy fare they’ve never tasted in their bland, bare diet. You bite a cookie and remember they’ve never seen such an array of desserts, not tasted gingerbread, whoopie pies, cheesecake, or apple pie. You want to fill a platoon of carts with goods and goodies for them, those children hungry in body and soul. Their parents, too. You want to invite them all home for Christmas dinner, dessert, cocoa and presents just for them beside a colorful tree.

Your Christmas wish is their provision, just a fraction to closer equality with the local kids you see at school in NH, with your own adored cousins with their own bedrooms and playrooms. You just want to lessen the disparity a bit. Just a bit.

Why can’t you?

Why? Why? Why?

“Shame on the artist and shame on the buyer,” you might say of the “Comedian” debacle, er, event. “Shame on them.”

I’ve thought that, certainly.

But I like to think that artist Cattelan gladly accepted the bids of eager buyers of his piece and donated the proceeds to a worthy cause. A cause that might feed hungry children, give vaccinations, or pay teachers. I like to think that the buyers of “Comedian” laugh themselves at the absurdity, share in the comedy, enjoy the banana, and proceed to spend much more money on feeding other hungry people.

I prefer to imagine the best of them because I don’t know the truth.

Just as we don’t know the history of the gangsters patrolling the streets of Haiti, the desperation of parents leaving their children at orphanages, the fear of children with food insecurity. We can’t know, truly, we of the First World, we of anywhere in the realm of Middle Class or above, the lot of the Poor. The cultural, generational poor. We can’t ever answer the heavy questions of why.

We can overcome our anger with determination. Our sorrow with perseverance. We can fight the evil of poverty, as Shelley Jean promises she will, every day (146.) We can strive to bring a little more equality to an unequal world, a little more joy to the despairing, a little more sustenance to the weak. We can lessen that yawning chasm of disparity a little more. We can stop fuming over the “why” and start focusing on the “how.” The first step is, in good humor, to put bananas and duct-tape to practical use in filling  bellies and  patching holes.

*Call to Action: If you would like to help this beautiful second-grader and her family upgrade their house, including purchasing new tin for a fitted, leak-free roof, please contact myself at rachel.allyssa93@gmail.com or Beverly Burton at bsburton902@gmail.com. Thank you. 

*Note: Upon researching Maurizio Cattelan I am very intrigued and have gained respect for the artist. I appreciate his wit, self-effacement, and courage at poking fun at himself, other artists, curators and collectors, and at his attempts to make us see with new perspective. Although I do not agree with what I deem religious degradation in some of his art pieces, I concur we are too consumed with ourselves and quick to adopt opinions and judgements without due consideration. Also reading about Cattelan and his previous works has alleviated much of my frustration about the "Comedian" spectacle. Note the sources on Cattelan listed below.

Sources

Buck, Louisa. “'Art's Most High-Profile Provocateur' Maurizio Cattelan on His New Blenheim Palace Show.” The Art Newspaper, The Art Newspaper, 12 Sept. 2019, www.theartnewspaper.com/interview/art-s-most-high-profile-provocateur-maurizio-cattelan-discusses-his-new-blenheim-palace-show.

Elbaor, Caroline. “Buyers of Maurizio Cattelan's $120k Banana Defend It as 'the Unicorn of the Art World,' Comparing the Work to Warhol's Soup Cans.” Artnet News, Artnet News, 11 Dec. 2019, news.artnet.com/art-world/maurizio-cattelan-banana-collector-1728009.

Jean, Shelley, et al. Shelley in Haiti: One Woman's Quest for Orphan Prevention Through Job Creation. Papillon Press, 2017.

Jones, Jonathan. “Don't Make Fun of the $120,000 Banana – It's in on the Joke | Jonathan Jones.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 9 Dec. 2019, www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2019/dec/09/the-art-world-is-bananas-thats-what-maurizio-cattelans-been-saying-all-along.

“Maurizio Cattelan.” Guggenheim, Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, 2019, www.guggenheim.org/artwork/artist/maurizio-cattelan.