Maurizio Cattelan's viral banana Comedian to go under the hammer for $1.5 million

If you walk into any supermarket, you can generally buy a bunch of bananas for a few bucks.

But a singular banana duct-taped to a wall might soon change the status quo.

The conceptual art piece, part of a work called Comedian by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan, is estimated to sell for more than $US1 million ($1.5 million) at an upcoming auction at Sotheby's in New York.

It debuted in 2019 as an edition of three fruits at the Art Basel Miami Beach fair, where it became a much-discussed sensation.

An edition of the work went on display at the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne at the end of last year.

'Profound and provocative'

The infamous banana went viral when another artist took it off the wall and ate the fruit, which was then replaced with a backup.

Selfie-seeking crowds became so thick Comedian was withdrawn from view, but three editions of it sold for between $120,000 and $150,000, according to Perrotin gallery.

The artwork now has an estimated value of between $1 million and $1.5 million at Sotheby's auction on November 20.

Sotheby's head of contemporary art David Galperin calls it profound and provocative.

"What Cattelan is really doing is turning a mirror to the contemporary art world and asking questions, provoking thought about how we ascribe value to artworks, what we define as an artwork," Mr Galperin said.

However, bidders will not be buying the same fruit that was on display in Miami.

Sotheby's said the fruit always was meant to be replaced regularly, along with the tape.

"What you buy when you buy Cattelan's Comedian is not the banana itself, but a certificate of authenticity that grants the owner the permission and authority to reproduce this banana and duct tape on their wall as an original artwork by Maurizio Cattelan," Mr Galperin said.

Is the artwork a prank?

The very title of the piece suggests Cattelan himself likely did not intend for it to be taken seriously.

Chloé Cooper Jones, an assistant professor at Columbia University School of the Arts, said it is worth thinking about the context.

Cattelan premiered the work at an art fair, visited by well-off art collectors, where Comedian was sure to get a lot of attention on social media.

Ms Jones said that might mean the art constituted a sort of dare to the collectors to invest in something absurd from Cattelan, who is often thought of as a "trickster artist".

She said if Comedian is just a tool for understanding the insular capitalist art-collecting world "it's not that interesting of an idea," but she thinks it might go beyond poking fun at rich people.

"His work is often at the intersection of the sort of humour and the deeply macabre," she said.

"He's quite often looking at ways of provoking us, not just for the sake of provocation, but to ask us to look into some of the sort of darkest parts of history and of ourselves."

Ms Jones added that there is a dark side to what the banana represents, a fruit with a history entangled with imperialism, labour exploitation and corporate power.

"It would be hard to come up with a better, simple symbol of global trade and all of its exploitations than the banana," she said.

Comedian hits the block about the same time that Sotheby's is also auctioning one of the famed paintings in the Water Lilies series by the French impressionist Claude Monet, with an expected value of about $60 million.

When asked to compare Cattelan's banana to a classic like Monet's Nymphéas, Mr Galperin said impressionism was not considered art when the movement began.

"No important, profound, meaningful artwork of the past 100 years or 200 years, or our history for that matter, did not provoke some kind of discomfort when it was first unveiled," Mr Galperin said.

AP