The Federal Court of Miami, Florida, ruled in favor of Maurizio Cattelan, recognizing the Paduan artist’s copyright on his work Comedian, the controversial banana attached to the wall with duct tape, sold in 2019 at the Art Basel Miami Beach fair for $120,000. Joe Morford, an American artist who claims to have been the pioneer of sticking fruit to walls with adhesive tape in 2000, had filed a civil suit against Cattelan, arguing that the latter was inspired by Comedian to his work Orange and Bananain which plastic versions of these fruits were taped to panels on a wall.
District Judge Robert Scola’s decision points out that there was insufficient evidence that Cattelan had seen Morford’s fruit arrangement. In any case, according to Judge Scola, the concept shared by the works, “the placing of a banana on a vertical plane using adhesive tape”, is not protected by copyright law. The judge noted the significant differences between the works, especially «the angle where the banana was placed» and «the exacting standards that Cattelan has developed for the display of Comedian.
Failure to do otherwise would further limit the already limited number of ways a banana can legally be tacked to a wall without infringing on Morford’s work,” Scola said of his decision. Scola’s decision came weeks after the US Supreme Court ruled that the series Prince of Art Andy Warhol violated the copyright held by photographer Lynn Goldsmith, who had taken the photo of the Minneapolis pop star on which the screen printing of the master of Pop Art was based.
