Banana – a subject that matters, by Vlad Dobritan

                                       

    Banana is a subject that really matters more than you think; don’t think about it as a source of protein, it is more than a fruit.

Musa sapientum gives to the world more than a fruit, it gives a symbol, a symbol that was used through the ages  and became a symbol for sexuality, apes, even the banana skin became a symbol of bad luck, karma’s way of making you slip, one of the comedy over used clichés, and even a title for one of Chris Rhea’s songs, “God’s great banana skin”.

   In visual arts, bananas started to be used in the early 20’ by artists like the American photographer Imogen Cunningham; later in the 30’s Georgia O’Keeffe made some works based on enlarged banana flowers, in the 30’s the avant-garde graphic designer Edward McKnight Kauffer created a series of banana based works using lithography, examples of artists using bananas  as source of inspiration are countless.   In the 60’ bananas started floating around Claes Oldenburg’s head too when he started to make sketches of a banana for a monument, Colossal Monument for 42nd Street: Banana. Bananas will never let go of Oldenburg, or Oldenburg will never let go of bananas, fact proved by his 2002 show  at 534 West 25^th Street in New York where he exhibited his works  of banana peels made in collaboration with his wife Coosje van Bruggen.

   Examples of artists using banana, as I said before are countless, from Warhol’s bananas to Dieter Roth’s “Pocket Room”, a series of works that consists in putting slices of banana on cardboard, packed in small plastic boxes small enough to fit in a pocket.

   So, yes, bananas are a subject of interest for everyone of us one way or the other and, in my opinion, it had a considerable impact on our culture and art.