Is the art world going bananas?

I’ve been painting for a number of years now but recently decided to teach myself a new painting technique using a medium I’d never used before. After weeks of practising that resulted in a series of paintings that were a complete mess, I finally managed to get the hang of it. I then started showing my new types of art to people I regularly bumped into in neighbourhood and in around 10 days I managed to sell 10 paintings. I was over the moon. I mean to have your art appreciated by people other than your family, who by the way will like anything you create no matter how bad it turns out, is a tremendous feeling and an enormous boost to your morale as an amateur artist/hobbyist.

I’ve always been told that art is personal to a buyer. No matter how pretty you think, or other people think it is, they’re not going to part with their money for it unless it evokes a special kind of emotion deep within them. Or if they find the art has a hidden meaning that they can spend their time deciphering. Or if the art is interactive or reactive in a never-seen-before way that it creates a buzz in the art community.

There are several types of art. Three that spring to mind are traditional, abstract and the performing art.

Traditional art, like mine, is like a landscape, a still life or a portrait that looks like who or what it is meant to be. You don’t have to rack your brains trying to figure out what it is or isn’t supposed to be. In contrast, if you’re looking at a piece of art but are not sure what to make of it or what it is, then you’re looking at an abstract. It could be a series of symmetrical shapes, a giant red dot, or a tiny one on the canvass.

A famous abstract artist was Mondrian who created a series of paintings that comprised straight lines that crossed each other on one corner of the canvass, leaving the rest of it blank. The series of paintings varied in the thickness or colour of the lines and the background colour on which they were painted. This is classic abstract art where the viewer is ‘challenged’ with lots of questions about it, its creator’s state of mind, if there’s a hidden message, or if he just happen to run out of art supplies! A friend once said to me that she preferred traditional art because it is what it is and so doesn’t tax her brain. She preferred a serene scenery to a series of triangles or straight lines that appear to be meaningless. Maybe the artist just wasn’t thinking or couldn’t be bothered to paint anything decent.

To me, the latest and least meaningful art, and one at which many people are poking fun, is the ripe banana taped to a wall in Miami. Just to be clear, in case you missed it, it is a real, edible banana that has been taped to a white wall with black duct tape inside the Miami gallery. During the exhibit, a performing artist walked over to the art, prised the banana off the wall and ate it. It was then replaced with another banana!

The art word is buzzing over it and what is the most insane thing about it is that someone bought it for a whopping $120,000. Now, usually when you buy a painting in a gallery, or anywhere, you get a framed or unframed canvass of sorts that you can take home and hang up on your own wall. But the giant elephant in the room, and which nobody seems to be talking about, is what did the buyer get for his money? Was it the wall on which the banana was taped? Or the edible and perishable banana which, if not eaten will definitely rot over time because the artists says that banana needs to be replaced with a fresh one every 10 days or so. Whatever he bought, cannot be taken home without diminishing its value, not that this ‘art’ had any value in the first place. Moreover, this nonsense can be recreated by anyone in a matter of seconds. All one needs is a piece of fruit, some tape and space on a wall. Therefore, it has no intrinsic value, yet someone paid $120,000 for it.

Some critics say that this piece of art was merely a publicity stunt by the comedian who created it on the spur of the moment. Maybe, just maybe, the comedian was poking fun at such works that become famous and attract ludicrous prices.

‘Copycats’ are already popping up on the internet. Artists are taping to their own walls apples, pears and any fruits they can get hold of and posting them online to get hilarious comments. They’re not creating in competition with the banana but as a mockery of this genre that makes traditional art go on the back burner or get ignored.

In my view this type of art is an affront to traditional and abstract artists who toil over a piece for days and even months and years. Artists who sometimes struggle to sell, end up dropping the price of their prized pieces and who have to supplement their income by teaching and demonstrating. Sad.