The $120,000 banana turned the art world upside down. The 2 shekel ($0.57) banana was a gift I gave to Yifat, an art teacher in central Israel.
My reasoning for the gift: who wouldn't want such a prized copycat art installation in their art room?!
So, while pupils busily worked on their projects, I invited myself into the school art room to create the Oshi version of this now famous installation.
A pupil, who was not focused on his project, asked what I was doing and I quickly put him in charge of holding the tape while I cut off a piece with scissors. When I extracted the banana from my knapsack, he thought I had lost my mind.
I took the piece of tape from him, attached it to the banana, and stuck the yellow fruit up on the whiteboard.
Other pupils started to turn their heads. They wanted to know what had prompted a school clown to tape a banana to the wall. And why was I so proud of it.
The prompt, of course, came from Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan's "Comedian" art installation, which earlier this week catapulted to headlines when it sold for $120,000 -- only to be eaten by a performance artist days later.
To prepare for my copycat version, I had made a special trip to the supermarket to purchase a banana. I actually bought three. I kept two for my family. One, was for the tribute art installation.
I shared with the pupils the story of Cattelan's banana. They found it difficult to believe that someone would pay so much money for a banana taped to the wall. It is unbelievable. But also a great opening into 'what is art'?
Now the big question: Will the 2 shekel banana go down in art history as well?
Update: Oshi clowned in schools from 2018-2019. She gives talks and blogs about this out-of-the box experience.
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