Ode to a Duct Taped Banana

“Beauty is truth, truth beauty’ – that is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know”

Keats composed Ode to a Grecian Urn, making the point that its wonderous and delicate beauty would speak to all future generations. I don’t think he would have felt the the same way about this…

“Comedian,” by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan is a piece artwork (? Ed.) which consists of a banana duct-taped to the wall, with instructions for replacing it when it rots.

Not only did the intellectual artistic community fail to break into laughter at this idiocy representing itself as ‘art’, but it sold at Sotheby’s for $6.2 million! I think it would have been overpriced at $0.62, but with the last four years of inflation I suppose bananas and duct tape have gone up considerably.

Be advised, if you decide to type ‘bananas and duct tape’ into your favorite browser, make sure that ‘safe search’ is toggled on.

This kind of thing is not new. Way back in 1987…

Peeing into a glass tank is no great trick. Neither is purchasing a small plastic crucifix; they are available everywhere religious icons are sold. But apparently if you submerge a cross in your own urine (not someone else’s) and take a photo you can call it art and get people to buy it. The ‘artist’ received $15,000 for the photo, and in 2022 it sold at auction for $142,000. No word on how the glass tank, crucifix and urine were disposed of afterwards.

Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, but stupidity should be obvious.

This kind of thing reminds me of the fable of The Emperor’s New Clothes. A con man convinced the Emperor that he was donning a suit so wonderous that only very sophisticated people could see it. And the populace, not wanting to appear to be dolts, marveled at the wonderous raiment, just as the intelligentsia of the art world marvel at these profound ‘artistic’ creations that the Red State yokels cannot appreciate. Finally a young boy (pronoun assumed) says of the Emperor “But he is wearing nothing at all!”. Truth comes out of the mouth of babes, and from the Rich Freggiaro Cycling Blog. Truth is beauty, and the truth is there is no beauty here.