«Bananas»

In 1967 Andy Warhol put a single banana on the cover of The Velvet Underground & Nico. The sleeve carried a sticker that said "Peel slowly and see", and under it sat a pink banana. In 2019, at Art Basel Miami Beach, Maurizio Cattelan taped a real banana to a wall, called it Comedian and sold it as an edition. Someone ate it during the fair. Two very different artists, one ordinary fruit, and banana pop art has had a place in the gallery ever since.

That is the starting point of this original pop art painting.

What I painted is a bunch of ripe bananas, past their best. The skins are yellow with dark brown bruises and black speckles, and I left them rough on purpose. A fruit bowl would have been polite. This is the moment when the banana is almost too far gone, which is when it looks most alive to me.

Behind the bunch the canvas turns into a patchwork. The upper half is pale yellow and cream with thin white lines scribbled over it. Below, a teal and green band is broken up by small squares of yellow, blue and black, like pixels dropped onto the surface. On the right, cracked shapes in blue, green and white line drawings climb the edge, and the weave of the canvas shows through in places. I like how the careful fruit sits in the middle of all that noise.

Lichtenstein turned comic panels into paintings in the early 1960s, and Warhol did the same with soup cans in 1962. They made everyday things worth a long look. I wanted that for a banana, with a bit of Basquiat-style scribble over the top. It works as banana pop art in a kitchen, but it holds its own as contemporary pop art in a café or a hallway too.

This original is still available and ready to ship. Most of my other originals are already in private collections, and I paint new ones to order in any size. To ask about this one, message me on Instagram or by email.