Duct-taped banana sells for $6.2 million

As reported by Bloomberg:

Arguably the most famous artwork of the past decade has found a new buyer. Comedian, a sculpture by the artist Maurizio Cattelan, consisting of a piece of duct tape and a banana stuck to a wall, has sold for $6.2 million at Sotheby’s in New York after more than six minutes of fierce bidding. The buyer is China-born crypto entrepreneur Justin Sun, the auction house confirmed.

In an interview with Bloomberg following the sale, Sun said he was considering paying with the cryptocurrency he founded, Tron (TRX), but failing that with Bitcoin, which hit a record $95,000 at the time of the auction. (The lot was the only one of the night for which Sotheby’s would accept payments in crypto.)

It’s also considered by many in the art world as a legitimate work of fine art. The New York Times’ Jason Farago wrote a lengthy defense of the piece, arguing that the work “is a sculpture, one that continues Mr. Cattelan’s decades-long reliance on suspension to make the obvious seem ridiculous and to deflate and defeat the pretensions of earlier art.” 

The buyer on Wednesday night was purchasing a certificate of authenticity that gave them the right to manifest the piece as an official artwork, though Sotheby’s says they’ll in fact also receive a banana and a roll of duct tape as a sort of starter kit. (The work also comes with a detailed instruction manual for how it should be presented.)...

Sun plans to display the Cattelan in his Hong Kong apartment, but unlike his paintings and sculpture, he adds, “it’s very easy to bring with me—that’s the beauty of it.” Sun says he’s willing to loan the work to “any serious players in the industry who want to borrow our artwork to display it anywhere. If Elon Musk wants it, I’ll let him put it on the spaceship to Mars,” Sun concludes. “The banana goes to Mars.”

Note the purchase is not of the banana per se, but of the concept of a banana duct-taped to a wall.  The Guardian notes this:

The banana on auction was, according to the New York Times, bought earlier that day for just 35 cents from a fruit stand on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. That means the fruit’s value increased 15m times over the space of just a few hours. But then the banana is not what has really been sold here. Instead it’s the idea behind it, which Cattelan once told the the Art Newspaper was a comment on the art market itself...

For his $6.24m – the artwork’s full price after buyers’ fees are added – Sun will receive the banana, a roll of duct tape, instructions on how to install the work – including information on how to replace the banana – and a certificate of authenticity. It’s this latter item that holds the work’s true value. Anybody can duct tape a banana to their wall, after all, but Sun can authentically exhibit such a thing as Cattelan’s conceptual piece of art.

I have conceded before that I am a total philistine when it comes to the art world.  And I fully understand that this is the guy's money and he can do whatever he wants with it, but the money could be applied to so many other things in the real world.  The fact that the super-ultra-rich can cavort like this in public basically making a parody of themselves just fills me with disgust.  The Nonsequitur comic expressed it this way:

And the fact that the buyer is a crypto billionaire immediately brought to mind this old Dilbert:

Pardon the rant (or not, I don't care).  I'm sick and tired of all this billionaire crap.

Close-up nature photos

I'm too busy right now to spend time blogging, but couldn't resist adding these two photos that were shortlisted for the Close-up Photographer of the Year competition.  Above: mites on the face of a Kloss's forest dragon.  Below: a basket star perched on a fan.  Details re both photos (and more photos) at The Atlantic.

Hurricane aftermath in a mountain forest

Posted for my family in Asheville, whose home avoided major damage, but whose community is devastated.

And I'll add this video of a lake covered with debris:

What happens to the ecosystem of a lake in that situation?  One would have to assume that there are no resources available to clean the lake by removing the debris, which will start to decay.  The light and oxygen levels in the water will be inadequate for aerobic life.  The stench will probably be incredible.  Recreation and tourism will be at a standstill for years.

Addendum:  Amazing improvement in the lake since I posted this, thanks to the Army Corps of Engineers.  See the video at the link in the comment by reader Marc B.

Bringing television to remote Amazonian villages

In recent years, solar projects have multiplied in remote communities in several Amazonian countries, mainly with funding from civil society organisations, helping to democratise electricity in off-grid areas of Latin America...

Tapiyawa Waurá’s new hut is still being built so his family has not moved in yet, but solar energy already charges mobile phones and powers appliances. He is in charge of school lunches, and takes a tucunaré fish, or peacock bass, out of a newly installed freezer. “Before, they had to go straight into the fire,” he says. “Now I can leave them here for longer.”

The freezer, mobile phones and spotlights are now among the community’s most used and valued equipment. Though the night sky is no longer as starry with the increase in artificial light, replacing solar panels [for] many generators has brought quiet and taken away the smell of burning fuel, say residents.

The telephone box in one corner of the village no longer works either. Almost everyone holds a mobile phone. This unlimited connection to the internet in a place where, until recently, there was little access and where language and traditional rituals are important, has brought with it some concerns among leaders. Still, they say that there is no turning back.

I can understand the benefits of having electricity available.  I frankly don't know what to think about television.

"What a wonderful world" (David Attenborough)

My rule of thumb: if it's a David Attenborough video, it's worth blogging.

BTW, if you've never used the "fullscreen" button on a YouTube video [lower right corner], now would be a good time to try it...

Here's a background on the lyrics:

"What a Wonderful World" is a song written by Bob Thiele (as "George Douglas") and George David Weiss. It was first recorded by Louis Armstrong and released as a single in 1967...

The song gradually became something of a standard and reached a new level of popularity. In 1978, Armstrong's 1968 recording was featured in the closing scenes of the first series of BBC radio's cult hit, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and was repeated for BBC's 1981 TV series of the same. In 1988, Armstrong's recording was featured in the film Good Morning, Vietnam and was re-released as a single, hitting #32 on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart in February 1988. The single charted at number one for the fortnight ending June 27, 1988 on the Australian chart

Via truthdig.

Reposted from 2012 (!) to insert the Louis Armstrong version:

Five minutes worth watching...

... if you have a love or fascination for the natural world.  This video from the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute documents the discovery of a new species.  For those in a hurry, a written summary is available at Live Science.

Star-shaped sand ("nature's caltrops")

"These unique grains are actually the pointy husks of millions of tiny protists known as Foraminifera. Hoshizuna-no-hama is found on the north shore of the island of Iriomote, within the greater Yaeyama Islands in Okinawa Prefecture. Star sand beaches can also be found on the neighboring island of Hatoma, as well as the Kaijihama and Aiyaruhama beaches on the island of Taketomi."

And here's the Wikipedia page on caltrops.

(Mis)remembering Laika

Trigger alert: extreme animal cruelty.

All I remember from my schooling was that Laika was the first dog in space.  I didn't know about this part:

"Laika was ultimately chosen not only for her cool temperament under pressure but for her pleasing silhouette. She was selected to orbit Earth in Sputnik 2—a larger and more ambitious satellite than the original Sputnik. As a result, the Western media nicknamed Laika “Muttnik.” Under pressure to ensure this second launch was timed to coincide with the fortieth anniversary of the October Revolution, shortcuts appear to have been taken. Sputnik 2 took off successfully on November 3, 1957, and official Soviet news outlets reported a healthy passenger for the first few days. Decades later, we learned that these were in fact lies. Poor Laika perished about seven hours after liftoff, having endured terrible stress and unbearable temperatures (the latter were due to an issue with the thermal insulation). As a result, this first creature to leave Earth’s orbit, presumably in the history of the planet, circled the globe as a singed corpse for five long months before finally receiving an organic cremation when Sputnik 2 disintegrated while reentering Earth’s atmosphere..."

Remembering (?) Grover Cleveland

Food for thought presented by the TYWKIWDBI-like blog Perfect for Roquefort Cheese:

"US presidential numbering has been a matter of debate since Grover Cleveland served the first non-consecutive terms in 1884 and 1892 becoming the twenty-second and twenty-fourth leader of the United States—Trump being the second. Though not two separate individuals holding high office, the prevailing inclination was to hold then to their oaths and the gap in between, which made for two separate administrations. In 1950, the Congressional Directory (also responsible for minutes and numbering of legislative sessions), renumbered their order, eliciting barely a question since and leaving the matter settled, until now."

Here's a list of all the things I remember about Grover Cleveland:   

Pianists at play

The video above shows eight pianists sharing just two pianos; seven of them are previous winners of the Dublin International Piano Competition.

The one below has twelve pianists playing just one piano.

This performance has held the world record for the most pianists performing simultaneously on one piano."

Reposted from 2013

Rebecca - the White House raccoon

"In 1926, a citizen of Mississippi sent the raccoon to the First Family in time to be cooked for Thanksgiving. Calvin Coolidge instead kept her as a pet.

She was, as befitted the First Raccoon, exquisitely accessorized: she wore an embroidered collar. Clad in her finery, she roamed the White House, playing hide-and-seek. She participated in the Easter egg roll on the White House lawn, a bow tied to her collar. President Coolidge, the press reported, liked to have her in his study, sometimes draped around his neck, stroking her as he worked late into the night. And so she lived a life of luxury until she did a thing many of her fellow Americans have dreamed of but very few have achieved: she bit the president of the United States..."

Embedded photo cropped for size from the original at the Library of Congress blog.

If you want to be a judge for the Booker Prize...

 ... be prepared to do a lot of reading.

"In January, a box of books was delivered to my house, the first of many to arrive, with a steadiness that would at times feel overwhelming. I was about to spend the year as a Booker judge.

All my life I have dreamed of having swathes of time filled with nothing but reading. Yet as I stared at that first tranche of books, my overriding feeling was apprehension. Awarding a prize with the power to transform literary history, as well as the winner’s career, isn’t a task to take lightly. Plus, I’d been warned that each judge would be required to read more than 150 books over seven months..."

I had to do the mental math twice to appreciate how much reading that is.   

I have featured a couple Booker Prize winners in TYWKIWDBI recently (The Blind Assassin, Prophet Song), so I'll try the new one (I'm 82nd on our library wait list for 18 copies, so it will take a while).

"Flying Crooked"

"The butterfly, the cabbage white,

(His honest idiocy of flight)

Will never now, it is too late,

Master the art of flying straight,

Yet has — who knows so well as I? —

A just sense of how not to fly:

He lurches here and here by guess

And God and hope and hopelessness.

Even the aerobatic swift

Has not his flying-crooked gift."

"Flying Crooked," by Robert Graves, is often presented as being a mockery of ineptitude.  The cabbage white does have an erratic zig-zagging flight, but I think modern opinion favors this pattern as enhancing evasion of avian predators.  Photo by me.

A reminder that ancient statuary was often painted

The painting is by Jean-Léon Gérôme - Painting Breathes Life into Sculpture, 1893. 

Although it was initially thought that Greek statues were mostly unadorned white marble, by the early 19th century the systematic excavation of ancient Greek sites brought forth a plethora of sculptures with traces of multicolored surfaces. Some of these traces are still visible to the naked eye even today, though in most examples the remaining color has faded or disappeared entirely once the statues were exposed to light and air. In spite of this overwhelming evidence for painted statues, influential art historians such as Johann Joachim Winckelmann so strongly opposed the idea of painted Greek sculpture that proponents of painted statues were dismissed as eccentrics and their views largely dismissed for several centuries. It wasn't until published findings by German archaeologist Vinzenz Brinkmann in the late 20th century and early 21st century that painted Greek sculptures became an established undeniable fact. Using high intensity lamps, ultraviolet light, special cameras, plaster casts and certain powdered minerals, Brinkmann was able to scientifically prove that the entire Parthenon, including the actual structure as well as the statues, was in fact painted. He furthermore was able to reveal the pigments of the original paint and has created several painted replicas of Greek statues that are currently on tour throughout the world. Also in the collection, are replicas of works from other Greek and Roman sculptures showing that the practice of painting sculpture was wide spread and in fact the normative practice rather than the exception in Greek and Roman culture.

More at the Wikipedia entry.  Image found at Miss Folly, via.

Reposted from 2010 to some text and add two images from BBC Culture:

Even bronze statues would have been much brighter than their dark brown appearance suggests today: bronze acquires a patina over time. What we see as a uniform greenish-brown head would once have been gleaming bright, almost golden. Hair would have been painted dark and the flesh might well have been painted too. The eye sockets of ancient statues are often empty, because the eyes were made separately, and they have been lost over time. There is a magnificent pair of Greek eyes in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York [above], made of bronze, marble, quartz and obsidian...

And the Greeks are not the only ones whose statues were painted: the Romans were similarly enthusiastic about brightening up their marble. Paolo Liverani, of the University of Florence, has worked on a project to recreate the statue of Augustus of Prima Porta [below]. The emperor’s statue was discovered in 1863, and showed traces of the paint which once decorated it. A cast of the statue, its polychromy restored (and, in part, imagined), now stands in the Vatican Museum.

And finally this interesting tywk:

Winckelmann was a particular fan of Roman marble copies of Greek bronze statues: the Romans often copied Greek originals in marble. You can tell it is a marble copy of a bronze if a figure is leaning on something: a tree trunk, or a staff, for example. Or perhaps there is a little chunk of marble joining the two legs together.  Marble lacks the tensile strength of bronze, so it requires extra support to keep the figures stable.

Reposted from 2018 to add this excerpt from an essay in Harper's Magazine: 

"In the center of the city, near the Capitoline Hill and the monstrous slab of wedding cake that is the Vittorio Emmanuele II monument, runs the Via delle Botteghe Oscure, a wide and—by Roman standards—relatively undistinguished street, most notable in recent times as the site of the headquarters of the Italian Communist Party. Patrick Modiano stole its name for one of his melancholy novels about Paris and historical amnesia, but this original “street of dark shops” was dark, for at least part of its history, because of smoke and soot. In the eighth and ninth centuries, it was the site of a kiln in which monuments were broken up and burned to make lime for mortar. The thought of workshops running for decade after decade, century after century, grinding up works of art and feeding them into ovens, induces a kind of sublime terror, a feeling of insignificance in the face of the past. So much has vanished, so much labor and human expression has turned to dust."

Michaelangelo's depiction of breast cancer

"The unusual appearance of the left breast of Michelangelo's “Night,” a marble statue of a female figure, has often been mentioned in the literature on Michelangelo's Medici Chapel (Church of San Lorenzo, Florence, Italy). One of us, an oncologist, found three abnormalities associated with locally advanced cancer in the left breast. There is an obvious, large bulge to the breast contour medial to the nipple; a swollen nipple–areola complex; and an area of skin retraction just lateral to the nipple. These features indicate a tumor just medial to the nipple, involving either the nipple itself or the lymphatics just deep to the nipple and causing tethering and retraction of the skin on the opposite side. These findings do not appear in the right breast of “Night” or in “Dawn,” another female figure in the Medici Chapel, or in the many other depictions of women in works by Michelangelo...

Given that Michelangelo depicted a lump in only one breast, he presumably recognized this as an anomaly. Many doctors in his day could probably diagnose this condition in a woman. Historians of breast cancer agree that the disease and its treatment were discussed, often at length, and described as cancer by the most famous medical authorities of antiquity — Hippocrates, Celsus, and Galen — and by several prominent medieval authors, including Avicenna and Rolando da Parma...

Additional discussion at The New England Journal of Medicine