At the fruit stand where he works on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, Shah Alam sells dozens of bananas a day at 35 cents a piece, or four for a dollar.
He does a brisk business in cheap fruit outside Sotheby’s auction house; inside, art can sell for millions.
But last Wednesday, Mr. Alam sold a banana that a short time later would be auctioned as part of a work of absurdist art, won by a cryptocurrency entrepreneur for $5.2 million plus more than $1 million in auction-house fees.
A few days after the sale, as Mr. Alam stood in the rain on York Avenue and East 72nd Street, snapping bananas free of their bunches, he learned from a reporter what had become of the fruit: It had been duct-taped to a wall as part of a work by the Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan, and sold to Justin Sun, the Chinese founder of a cryptocurrency platform.
Persons:
Shah Alam, Alam, Maurizio Cattelan, Justin Sun
Locations:
York, Italian