The television news announcer looked directly into the camera and, with a straight face, reported that a piece of art—a banana duct-taped to a wall—sold for $6 million!

(I’ll pause here to let that sink in: a banana duct-taped to a wall sold for $6 million.)

It was French artist Edgar Degas who said, “Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.” Well, I didn’t just step off a banana boat, but is the person who paid $6 million for a Chiquita stuck to a piece of drywall nuttier than this year’s Christmas fruitcake? Word is, the buyer—feeling like a bowlful of cherries—grabbed his expensive banana and split.

What do you even do with a $6 million banana? When asked, the buyer—someone with the intelligence of dryer lint—said he planned to eat it. DUH! He could have spent a buck on a big bunch and filled his belly.

Art is in the eye of the beholder, so to my eye, it’s an IKEA stick figure drawing—though I need an Allen wrench in my hand to fully appreciate the beauty, relaxation and symmetry of assembling a bookcase. 

Art is our granddaughter’s crayon masterpiece of me with a straight line for a head, clown fingers and shoebox feet. 

For my wife Jan, it’s delicate watercolor flowers, painted for hours on end to create bookmarks and greeting cards for friends.

My introduction to art began one Christmas when my parents gave me an Etch A Sketch. I mastered horizontal and vertical lines, but trying to twist those knobs to form a circle? That was another story. The next year, they gave me Play-Doh. I rolled little pink tubes—not to stick on the wall, but into my sister’s nose.

Years later, I took a high school painting class and learned about still life. A banana duct-taped to a wall? That’s still life. A moose head mounted on the wall? Dead life.

For my year-end project, I drew a charcoal sketch of Richard Nixon. Unfortunately, it didn’t look much like Nixon. My teacher examined it and said, “Gary, I see a cross between Moms Mabley and Topo Gigio.” Not exactly presidential. 

Back to the banana boondoggle…

The infamous duct-taped banana made its debut in Miami in 2019. Like low-hanging fruit, it attracted a bunch of banana-loving art aficionados—and fruit flies! The hype spread and soon people were going, well, bananas! They sold three—not a full bunch—so it was hardly a banana bonanza.

Hats off to the artist who duct-taped a banana to a wall. He made a fortune and he didn’t even have much skin in the game.