Blog: Banana Part 2

“A banana is worth more than us’ : Maurizio Cattelan’s $120k fruit art has sparked an uprising among Miami’s overpaid janitors” – Art World

Buyers of Maurizio Cattelan’s $120,000 Banana defend the work as ‘the unicorn of the art world,’ comparing it to Warhol’s soup cans” – Art World

Art is about concepts and ideas.  I was thinking this morning over coffee with the birds, “Once an idea is formed is it static or fluid?”  For example, the concept of art has always been fluid for me. It has never been static.  Art changes and without change, art cannot grow and feed others.  The fluidity of art allows for exploration and discovery by every individual who seeks to find.  It allows an individual to be able to explore and discover and then, be able to reap bliss or sorrow from what they have found and sewn. As a reaper of their own harvest the individual learns both by suffering and bliss.

When the artist follows his inner most desires, aspirations, and thoughts that he is dominated and consumed by, such as impure thoughts or high endeavors, the individual artist then arrives at the fruit and fulfillment of his circumstances and conditions of his life.  The individual artist adjusts to his circumstances and plants seeds, his seeds.

The reader may ask, “What is she getting at?”  As always, my point is all about the individual and the seeds that they plant.  It is not about their circumstances or their environments.  For example, if I choose to have a healthy body, and I also choose to have a piece of chocolate for breakfast, whose fault is it that my body is not healthy?  Is it Jess’s for giving me chocolates for Christmas or is it mine for making an unhealthy choice.  It is mine.  I enjoyed the divine bliss of chocolate with the birds. But, if I were to choose to always eat chocolate for breakfast with my coffee, again I can ask myself, “Who’s fault is it that I have an unhealthy body?”   Mine and mine alone.

So applying this to art, if we in America and we who love the arts and for what they stand for, individualism and exploration, are planting seeds for a herd to feed upon, if we are planning seeds of static immobility, what are we to expect art to become?  For example, when the seed of a banana taped to a white wall  is authenticated by a well-known gallery and is called “art”, what does art become?  The concept definitely champions individuality. But, does it open doors to possibility, exploration and discovery when herds of folks line up in laughter to take a selfie with what the art industry is today calling art?

If the answer to the above question is, “Yes,” then, I have to also ask, “What is art today?”  Is it about the individual planting seeds for their souls and art or is it about the herd planting the seeds for all to agree upon and follow?