That 74-year-old NYC fruit vendor who originally sold the viral banana for 35 cents isn’t the only one up in arms over its $6.2 million sale at auction.
Banker-turned-artist Nelson Saiers — who’s been called the “Warhol of Wall Street” — pulling off a Black Friday stunt with an installation at the MoMA, which he says is in response to the multimillion fruit and duct tape art.
Saiers placed “Black Friday 50% off Everything” signs all over the museum on Friday.
He even put the sale sign in front of an iconic Matisse painting of women dancing.
“My goal was to juxtapose our hyper-materialistic, money driven world versus truly fantastic culture,” he told Page Six.
“Even the art world feels dominated by pieces like the banana which seems to be driven more by economics and money than profound artistic depth,” says Saiers, who’s had solo shows at Alcatraz and Harvard’s Leverett House.
The multimillion dollar piece of fruit motivated him to place his signs, “in front of truly great culture in the form of a Matisse masterpiece,” he explained.
A rep for MoMA did not comment.
Saiers declined to say what MoMA’s reception was to the guerilla installation — but this isn’t the first time he’s pulled one over on one of New York City’s art institutions.
In January, he printed up fake Metropolitan Museum of Art brochures, and placed them on the shelves with the museums’ official literature.
One read: “This brochure is not an official Met publication, but rather a guerilla art piece. The goal of this is to bring attention to human trafficking, particularly sex trafficking.”
The Met did not comment at the time.
Cattelan’s banana sold to investor Justin Sun, who ate the artwork.
