What $6.2 Million Really Buys

“The banana isn’t the art. The certificate is.”

Laurie Ziegler, an experienced art collector who has been educating me on the commercial side of the art industry since my 2022 tour of Lima galleries in Peru, offered insider insight into one of the most talked-about pieces to ever come out of Art Basel Miami Beach: Maurizio Cattelan’s The Comedian. Known colloquially as “the duct-taped banana,” the piece became a viral sensation after its 2019 debut. It seemed absurd! A banana duct-taped to a wall and priced at $120,000. But as Ziegler explained, what was sold wasn’t the banana—it was the idea.

“When someone buys The Comedian, they’re not paying for the fruit,” Ziegler elaborated. “What they’re really purchasing is the concept, which is represented by the certificate of authenticity. The banana is designed to be replaced—it’s ephemeral. What endures is the right to recreate the artwork.”

Hence, my further instruction into the exclusive, inner workings of the $68 billion global art industry. Among the many insights from my nonstop adventures during Miami Art Week, I discovered Art Basel Miami Beach is mostly about prestigious galleries able to repeatedly pass a rigorous and highly competitive vetting process, which includes an application detailing their proposed exhibition, artists they plan to feature and specific works they intend to show. The application must then get a nod from a selection committee of other gallery owners and industry experts, with some blue-chip galleries and even past exhibitors all fair game for exclusion every year.

As Bridget Finn, Director of Art Basel Miami Beach, explained, “The art world can be intimidating for all people. We try to provide entry points to make the art world approachable while still also accommodating a connoisseur community. That is a balance that we work very hard to achieve.”

Such then is the delicate balance of accessibility and exclusivity, creativity and commerciality, genius and absurdity. Which brings us back to the banana.

The collector who recently paid $6.2 million in the resale of The Comedian didn’t actually buy a banana duct-taped to a wall. Instead, he bought the luxury handbag equivalent of a certificate of authenticity, where, instead of authenticating that this was truly a banana stuck to a wall, the certificate grants him the right to recreate a banana duct-taped to a wall, following comprehensive directives on how to display the banana and the exact height and angle for placement. Should anyone be concerned about gastrointestinal issues of the new owner of the 2019 banana after he announced he’d eaten it, not to worry. It wasn’t the same banana. The banana is meant to be replaced often.

The sale of The Comedian highlights the subjectivity of art and the value of intellectual property over physical permanence. Collectors are now, apparently, willing to pay a premium for the rights to an idea, however easily that idea can be replicated in ways that skirt the line of copyright or design patent infringement.

“It’s a commentary on how we assign value—not to the material, but to the conceptual and the exclusive rights it represents,” noted Ziegler. “That’s what makes the art world so unique and, for some, so confounding.”

But what drives collectors to invest in art for staggering sums? Finn provided a multifaceted answer.

“For a lot of people, it is really the pursuit of broadening horizons. You hear about the artist. You hear about the story. You hear more, and so you’re enthralled with them. Or sometimes it’s not even that way. Sometimes it’s just a peculiar thing that seems to stay with you, and you continue to think about it.”

So collectors are motivated by transformative experiences from engaging with the art?

“I think growing your horizons, having those moments of discovery where you feel like you’ve entered something you wouldn’t, having that moment where something really changes your purview. It really shifts your thinking like, ‘wow! I wouldn’t have thought of that, and in that way!’ And then [the collectors] attach themselves to the work.”

One such Art Basel Miami Beach artist whose work has deepened many horizons is Clarence James, a Washington, D.C.-based former street artist whose journey from graffiti to galleries has led to collaborations with Fendi and Chanel. Known for emotionally charged uses of color and texture, James fuses the raw energy of street art with the introspection of fine art, merging spray paint, Krink mops, pastels, and wheat paste with acrylic and oil paint to create perception-defying pieces that challenge conceptions of identity, freedom, and the transient nature of existence.

“Street art has many layers: it is without permission; it is unauthorized; and it is unapologetic. It’s the voiceless having a voice,” James shared. “It is done under the guise of tags and monikers and names, and is done in the shadows. It happens when you aren’t looking or when you don’t notice. And then its existence becomes guerrilla marketing. The aesthetic, the energy, the rawness, the desperation. That’s what I bring to canvas.”

This tension between control and freedom, tradition and innovation, connects James’ work with collectors craving visual impact paired with emotional and cultural significance. This is the attachment of which Finn speaks that can drive a collector.

“Exploring identity and self-reflection helps create an emotional bridge with the audience,” James continued. “My work uses the universal language of the human face and layered symbolism to ask, ‘Who are you beneath the surface?’ I like to say my paintings suspend reality and provide for a moment of imagination.”

And collectors seeking out such profound answers have been willing to entertain upwards of $19,000 for some of James’ most prolific works. Which brings us, as we always must, to the passionate pursuit of luxury, and the emotional endeavor such pursuit engenders. Asked what advice James would give to luxury brand CMOs in using the metaphorical marketing brush to paint desire with their target customer,

“Tell stories that are authentic to you but leave room for the audience to find themselves in them. Symbolism works when it feels intentional—when every element has a purpose. Layer your narratives with personal, cultural, and universal elements to create depth. For brands, it’s about being both specific and universal at once—speaking to a unique identity while tapping into shared human emotions.”

He continued, “Layering allows for a narrative to unfold over time, drawing people deeper into the experience. Brands can use this by combining textures, mediums, and messages in their storytelling—merging past, present, and future, or creating campaigns that reveal different meanings at different perspectives, diverse perspectives that mirror the complexity of human experience.”

As collectors attach emotionally to pieces from Clarence James, it’s worth noting the environment in which art is presented can play a subconscious role. Finn knows this well. Before becoming Director of Art Basel Miami Beach, Finn honed her curatorial instincts as a gallery owner, where she was deeply attuned to the delicate interplay between the artist’s vision and the collector’s experience.

“We thought very intentionally about how to place work, how to create a space that told a cohesive story, and how to offer collectors an experience that was both personal and transformative,” she recalled.

Michal Korman, another Art Basel Miami Beach artist, agreed that where art is displayed is just as important to a sale as the art itself. “The challenging part is that you must think decor and concept at the same time. But as all great art I admire is by essence decorative.”

In referencing the Miami restaurant LPM, which is showing his work through December in a pop-up restaurant gallery paired with gastronomical interpretations of his work, Korman elaborated, “There is a feel of something welcoming and surprising in LPM’s interior design. Believe me, it is made to host and accommodate art. It has a beautiful atmosphere which calls for more and more beauty. When I see such a space I think: this is a place for me to be creative. But when I think of it, the whole world is. Then the form follows the purpose and the idea inside of the art follows the overall experience of the space – a dining room in this case – to create harmony and surprise.”

Such intentionality is woven into the curatorial vision of Art Basel Miami Beach. Finn’s early experiences shaped her understanding of how seemingly disparate works can coexist, creating moments of discovery for collectors.

“You’re constantly considering the needs of all the stakeholders,” she shared. “The artists, the galleries, the collectors—all of them have different ambitions, and it’s about finding ways to weave those ambitions together into something meaningful.”

In considering the needs of all stakeholders, we return to Michal Korman, whose reflective artistry offers a striking counterpoint to the raw immediacy of Clarence James. Where James commands attention with defiant raw energy, Korman asks you to slow down and savor life’s fleeting moments. If James is the rebel with a spray can, Korman is the philosopher with a paintbrush, blending Proustian introspection with Japanese aesthetics to create a visual love letter to time and memory.

This contrast is at the heart of what Finn created in 2024’s Art Basel Miami Beach. “I think about all of the stakeholders a lot, and all of their needs and ambitions and wants are very different. So trying to refine things and weave different experiences into what already exists, we are constantly doing, and that is not something we take lightly.”

Korman’s work reflects a masterful interplay of time, memory, and simplicity, drawing deeply from his inspirations while urging you to pause, reflect, and find joy in life’s quiet, ephemeral moments.

“The idea of passing time is the crosspoint between these two influences of mine. I use meticulous observation followed by simplified structure and form, along thinking-time and then a long doing-time. This is why my art talks about the small joys of everyday life: growing flowers, book-reading, eating a piece of chocolate.”

And yet, his work is still meant to be bought. Korman’s marketing takeaway is the same as James’: “Genuine souls always draw attention.”

Authenticity is what drives consumer behavior, as is balancing what you wish to express against what your customer wants to buy.

“We live in a world that is both one and many, just as we are,” said Korman. “This is why it has always been important to include the novelty, the foreign, the ‘odd’ or unfamiliar to my thinking process. Thought leads to action; when you create something and offer it to the world, the world responds, letting you know if you’ve done it right. I’m glad it works this way.”

As I walked the rows of Art Basel Miami Beach, considering if, given the means, I would ever pay $6.2 million for an idea, I stumbled across a different type of artist that brought me close to tears: Ari Melber, host of MSNBC’s “The Beat with Ari Melber.”

The nature of my work has allowed me to meet everyone from Muhammad Ali to the late musician Prince without ever once acknowledging the celebrity as nothing more than another human being. Yet Ari was known as my mother’s “boyfriend” to the hospital nurses who took care of my mother in her final days with stage 4 cancer, all of whom had strict instructions the TV must be turned to MSNBC at 6 p.m. sharp every weekday. Prior to these last days, it was I who followed these strict instructions after moving my mother in with me following her diagnosis.

As such, in that moment, I would have spent $6.2 million to have my mother spend an hour in conversation with Ari, because the things that command such significant prices are the things which stir deeply profound emotions within us. That is both the allure and mystery of art, even art many perceive as just a concept of an idea.

As Ziegler mused, “People connect with art because it speaks to something deep inside them, something they may not even fully understand. That’s the beauty of it.”