Last week, a banana taped to a wall was auctioned off as a work of art at Sotheby’s.
The bidding became aggressively competitive and was ultimately purchased by a cryptocurrency entrepreneur named Justin Sun.
For $6.2 million.
Yes, that’s a six with six zeroes following…and some change.
The artist, Maurizio Cattelan, had purchased the original banana for thirty cents in Florida. Duct tape is comparatively more pricey: $7.98 at Home Depot. But still…
The art piece was called Comedian. Justin Sun isn’t actually buying the banana, but a certificate of authenticity that gives the owner the right to reproduce it on their own wall, with their own banana and duct tape, and attribute it as an original piece of art by Cattelan. So Justin still has to buy another banana and take a trip to Home Depot, maybe as a quick stop on the way home from Sotheby’s.
This is why the terrorists hate us.
David Galperin, Sotheby’s Head of Contemporary Art, had an interesting take. In an interview, he said, “What Cattelan is really doing is turning a mirror to the contemporary art world and asking questions, provoking thought about how we ascribe value to artworks, what we define as an artwork.”
Galperin added, “No important, profound, meaningful artwork of the past 100 years or 200 years, or our history for that matter, did not provoke some kind of discomfort when it was first unveiled.”
I’ll leave it up to the future to ascertain the profundity of a banana taped to a wall. But I do know a thing or two about discomfort.
Value is assigned to something simply based on what someone is willing to pay for it. The religious leaders in the gospels offered Judas thirty pieces of silver for Jesus. That may have been worth as little as five days’ wages. When the Hebrew prophet Zechariah was offered thirty pieces of silver for his shepherding, he considered it stingy and insulting.
Imagine the messiah—God in the flesh—being valued with a demeaning, offensive price. Then juxtapose this: God turned around and valued humans at an unimaginable cost: the life of his son. Greater love has no one than this: he valued humans so much he would give his life for them.
And it is here that leadership must recognize something bigger than organizational systems, management challenges, guiding policies, strategic planning, and other critical structural needs. Effective organizational mechanisms are vital. But this, leaders, is our great task: we must lead and inform those who place little value on God that they are, in turn, considered invaluable by that same God. People must know—and experience—what their true worth is, for it is in that understanding that real love can be found.
Dave Workman | The Elemental Group
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