«Comedian», the famous work by Maurizio Cattelan (Padua, 1960) – also known as «the banana» – continues to conquer the headlines. Indeed, that banana glued to the wall with duct tape that had caused such a stir during the fair at Art Basel Miami Beach in 2019 (later bought by the Guggenheim for $150,000) has become the subject of lawsuits against the Italian artist. In reality, even before giving Cattelan more than a headache there was the French sculptor Daniel Druet to whom the Italian artist had commissioned the creation of some works (including La Nona Ora and Him), who had requested compensation of a good 6 million euros to Cattelan’s gallery owner, Perrotin, to be recognized as the sole author of the works exhibited in the Not afraid of Love exhibition, hosted in the spaces of the Monnaie de Paris. For the French judges, the fact did not exist precisely because the sculptor had created the works following the detailed indications of Cattelan. An important victory which, however, was followed by the accusation made by the American artist Joe Morford, according to which the Comedian sculpture plagiarized his work created in 2000 and entitled Banana & Orange. Although initially a southern district judge in Florida found valid elements for the litigation to continue, this week the federal judge in Miami ruled in favor of the Italian artist.
A student eats Cattelan’s banana: it was a work of art hanging in the Seoul museum
“Evidence is missing”
“The decision by US District Judge Robert Scola states that there was insufficient evidence that Cattelan had seen Morford’s fruit arrangement,” Artnews reads. “Regardless, the concept shared by the works, namely ‘affixing a banana to a vertical plane using sticky tape’ is not protected by copyright law”. Furthermore, the magazine points out that the judge would have noticed substantial differences in the two works, especially as regards the angle “in which the banana was positioned” and “the rigorous standards that Cattelan has developed for the exposure of Comedian” . A victory that comes weeks after the Supreme Court ruled that Andy Warhol’s Prince series infringed the copyright of photographer Lynn Goldsmith, casting a shadow over the doctrine of “fair use”, i.e. the law that sanctions the possibility of reusing particular circumstances) of copyrighted material without the need for authorization from the owners.
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