The Eye of the Beholder

Has the art world gone bananas?

(Modern art, moments before assembly.)

“A cynic is someone who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.”

~ Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890)

Joel Bowman with today’s Note From the End of the World: Buenos Aires, Argentina…

$210 million for a Gauguin... $250 million for a Cézanne... $450 million for a da Vinci...

... and $6.2 million for… a rotting banana duct-taped to the wall?

Yes, dear reader, the geniuses of the avant-garde world of modern art are at it again, putting the “con” firmly back in connoisseur. Late last week, while unenlightened epsilons the world over were slicing bananas to enjoy with their morning muesli or perhaps slipping on a discarded peal, those who know better were busy buying and selling the following work of “art” for more money than most people will earn in a lifetime.

(Behold, Art!)

The (ahem…) “work,” aptly titled Comedian, sailed past its totally reasonable pre-auction estimate of a mere $1.5 million to eventually sell for $6.2 million, perhaps proving that the art world does indeed have a sense of humor after all. Now, if that’s a bit rich for your blood, it could be because you just don’t “get it.” At least, that’s what the sellers would have the us all believe.

According to David Galperin, head of contemporary art for Sotheby’s, the banana “transcends geographies, language, understanding, cultural differences.” Riiight. The nosebleed price tag, Galperin gushed, “spoke to its universality, the way it kind of pierces through the cultural zeitgeist to the very center.”

As for “transcending understanding,” Galperin won’t get any argument from us. And certainly, the new owner appears well chuffed now that he is one ingredient closer to the perfect smoothie. From his Instagram post:

I’m thrilled to announce that I’ve bought the banana!!! I am Justin Sun, and I’m excited to share that I have successfully acquired Maurizio Cattelan’s iconic work, Comedian, for $6.2 million.

This is not just an artwork; it represents a cultural phenomenon that bridges the worlds of art, memes, and the cryptocurrency community. I believe this piece will inspire more thought and discussion in the future and will become a part of history. I am honored to be the proud owner of the banana and look forward to it sparking further inspiration and impact for art enthusiasts around the world.

Sun announced that he planned on eating the banana over the coming days “as part of this unique artistic experience, honoring its place in both art history and popular culture.”

As for the “artist,” he’s reportedly hard at work on a plum.

The Eye of the Beholder

But let us refrain from snarky judgements for a change, lest we be accused of harboring banana envy. Rather, we shall rise to Mr. Sun’s challenge and offer some thoughts and discussion on the origin and nature of value.

We begin with a basic precept, so simple it is almost universally misunderstood: Value is subjective. 

That is to say, just as beauty is in the eye of the beholder... and offense in the ear of the listener... so too does value depend on human experience.

Ludwig von Mises, the great Austrian economist, was on the case when he observed that value was not determined by the nature of objects themselves, as existing in some kind of tree-falling-in-the-woods vacuum, but through our interactions with and subjective appreciation for them. The extent to which we find them useful in achieving our desired ends in a given moment, in other words. 

“Value is not intrinsic, it is not in things,” Mises argued in Human Action. “It is within us; it is the way in which man reacts to the conditions of his environment.”

And therein lies the X-factor... the Deus ex Machina... or, perhaps more aptly, the brazen banana bender...

...Man! 

Hubristic, folly-prone, own-tail-chasing, man. As long as perceived value depends on the whims and caprices of man it is, almost by definition, bound to be irrational. Mr. Sun himself spent $6.2 million making precisely this point. But he is not the only collector with more dollars than sense. Far from it…

Accounting for Taste

Consider the Top 5 most expensive paintings ever sold, shown here in reverse order, least to most expensive. (We have included some additional details so as to make tangential remarks a bit further on...)

5. Number 17A by Jackson Pollock, 1948, oil on fiberboard, 112 x 86.5 cm. Sold in 2015 for ~$200M

4. Paul Gauguin, Nafea Faa Ipoipo? (When Will You Marry?) 1892, oil on canvas, 101 x 77 cm. Sold in 2014 for $210M.

3. Les Joueurs de cartes (The Card Players), Paul Cézanne, 1894-95, oil on canvas, 47.5 × 57 cm. Sold in 2011 for $250M.

2. Interchange by Willem de Kooning, 1955, oil on canvas, 200.7cm by 175.3. Sold in 2015 for ~$300M. 

1. Salvator Mundi (Savior of the World), Leonardo da Vinci, 1499-1510, oil on walnut panel, 45.4 cm × 65.6. Sold in 2017 for $450M.

[NB - It is perhaps worth noting here that ALL of the Top 10 paintings on this list were sold within the past decade, giving some indication as to the Niagara of liquidity looking for a safe haven during this worldwide fiat flood...]

Whence Cometh Value?

Now, by what objective metric might one fairly value these pieces? 

By scarcity? Unlike Sun’s banana, each original above is a “one of a kind” piece... but so are millions of others which didn’t make the list. That hardly helps us. 

Besides, there are copies on copies on copies of all the most famous works in the world, good, bad and edible. Take a walk along the banks of the Seine. Anyone would think the Louvre would be empty, given all the masterful reproductions up for hock on any given afternoon. And yet, this fact hardly seems to diminish the value of the originals. If anything, these reproductions only heighten the near-mystical allure of the genuine articles. 

(It’s the same reason Louis Vuitton and Gucci don’t really care that the plazas and bazaars of Shanghai are flooded with their cheap knock-offs... nobody who spends $50k on a Birkin bag was ever going to buy a street stall fake, and vice-versa. In the end, it’s just brand recognition and free advertising.)

What’s more, Jackson Pollock’s pieces become scarcer by the day. As a man committed to his bottle as well as his brushes, the absent-minded artist regularly failed to properly treat his canvases before painting, thereby condemning them to certain ruin, like a sinking Venetian apartment… or a rotting piece of fruit. Does this mean they should then command a “limited time only” premium... or are they more like fast-depreciating options contracts, suffering from terminal time decay until they eventually expire worthless?

There appears to be no rhyme, no reason... no rationale. Only perception. Only subjective value. 

How about raw materials, then? Don’t they come with some “intrinsic value”? 

Let’s see... Gauguin’s piece is roughly two-thirds larger than Cézanne’s. Both are acclaimed post-impressionists. Both Frenchmen. Both painted around the same time and with the same materials; oil on canvas. Should the former be worth two-thirds more than the latter?

Hmm...

Say we focus on pure aesthetic achievement, attempting to stare through the “eye of the beholder.” What do we see? 

Your editor has no particular beef with Mr. Kooning... but who among us can really tell a masterpiece of abstract expressionism from a 6 year-old’s spilled breakfast?  

And yet, modernist marvels are all the rage among the highest priced pieces ever sold. We checked the Top 100 Most Expensive List (so you didn’t have to suffer through them) and discovered plenty of Warhols, Rothkos and Bacons... 

And yet, there was not a single Caravaggio to be found... not one Velázquez... nary a John Singer-Sargent, a Johannes Vermeer, a Jan van Eyck… none of our personal favorites, in other words. Not even a humble pear!

As you see, Dear Reader, whether bidding up meme stocks, grasping at NFT ether or canvassing the archive under the Sotherby’s auction hammer, there’s simply no accounting for taste. 

Until next week,

Cheers,

Joel Bowman

P.S. Did you know, you can now support our work by becoming a Notes member… all for less than 1/88,500th of a banana?

Here’s what a few of our Notes members are saying…

Thanks to ALL our Notes members for supporting our work. The future is bright with you on board. We may be small, but we are legion. And we are bringing down the mainstream narrative… one brick at a time.