NYC fruit vendor, 74, who sold banana devastated after it became viral $6.2M artwork: I am a poor man
It went bananas.The New York City fruit vendor who sold an ordinary banana that was duct-taped to a gallery wall inside Sotheby’s and sold for a whopping $6.2 million was devastated to learn that he was made the butt of the joke — but New Yorkers and the art buyer are now lining up to support him.
Shah Alam, a 74-year-old fruit seller who works a sidewalk stand outside Sotheby’s on the Upper East Side for $12 an hour, sold the piece of fruit that would become part of Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan’s absurdist work titled “Comedian,” the New York Times reported Thursday.The conceptual piece, which first debuted at Art Basel Miami Beach in 2019, offers a commentary on the ridiculousness of the art world, with its meaning tied to the money and fans it attracts.It was sold by Sotheby’s last week on behalf of an anonymous collector.
“In that way, the work becomes self-reflexive: The higher the price, the more it reinforces its original concept,” Cattelan wrote to the Times.Last week, that meaning swelled to the millions at auction.
The opening bid started at $800,000 and within five minutes, the taped banana — which requires the fruit to be refreshed once or twice a week — sold for $5.2 million plus over $1 million in auction-house fees to a Chinese cryptocurrency company founder.Alam, a nearly blind Bangladeshi immigrant who doesn’t speak much English, had no idea his 35-cent banana was resold for the eyeball-popping price until a Times reporter found him and told him this week.The new information — confirmed by a spokesperson from Sotheby’s — brought tears to his eyes, the Times said.
“I am a poor man,” Alam told the reporter, his voice breaking.“I have never had this kind of money; I have never seen this kind of money.”The fruit seller moved from Dhaka, where he was a civil servant, to the US in 2007 to be near his adult daughter who lives on Long Island, the outlet reported.
A widower, Alam said he pays $500 a month to liv...