Maurizio Cattelan Faces Plagiarism Lawsuit Over Famed Banana Artwork – ARTnews.com

Owning lately prevented legal drama in France, artist Maurizio Cattelan is dealing with a separate lawsuit in the U.S. more than his famed banana sculpture Comedian, which brought about a stir at Art Basel Miami Beach in 2019.

Artist Joe Morford has alleged that Cattelan plagiarized his get the job done Banana & Orange (2000), which in the same way characteristics parts of fruit that are duct-taped to a wall. Cattelan’s lawful group had tried to have the lawsuit tossed out but, very last week, a choose for the Southern District of Florida ruled that there was ample of a resemblance involving Comic and Banana & Orange for the fit to go ahead.

“Morford ought to plausibly allege that Cattelan experienced access to Banana & Orange and that—after dissecting Banana & Orange and stripping (or filtering) absent the non-guarded things of it—there is a sizeable similarity among the two operates,” Choose Robert N. Scola, Jr. wrote in a ruling filed on Wednesday.

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Morford promises the operate was readily available on Fb and YouTube, whilst it stays unclear irrespective of whether Cattelan basically saw the piece on either of those people social media platforms.

A consultant for Cattelan did not immediately answer to a ask for for remark.

When it was proven at Art Basel Miami Beach, Comedian produced a blend out of outrage and fascination, and was at one point even eaten by a area general performance artist. Ultimately, the do the job bought so much awareness that it experienced to be taken out completely by Perrotin, the gallery that experienced introduced it to the fair and offered three copies of it for a whole of $390,000.

A model of Comedian is presently on perspective at a Cattelan study at the Sea Globe Society and Arts Centre in Shenzhen.

The lawsuit is the next one particular this yr involving Cattelan’s function. The initially took location in Paris and associated queries about whether Cattelan could be thought of the writer of some of his most famed is effective, specified that he had commissioned a wax sculptor to develop them. That accommodate was dismissed very last week. Cattelan was not a defendant in that suit, though Perrotin, his gallery, and the Monnaie de Paris, an artwork room that staged a study of his artwork, ended up.