For the birds

ARTIST Maurizio Cattelan caused a worldwide sensation with his famed $120,000 banana duct-taped to a gallery wall in 2019 — and now he’s back at Art Basel with a flock of dead pigeons. Perched atop the edge of the Perrotin booth’s walls in Miami Beach were 56 exquisitely taxidermied birds. One piece consisting of 35 pigeons, titled “Ghost,” was $350,000. Another grouping of 21 birds goes for $210,000. Presumably, performance artists are not quite chomping at the bit to eat this installation off the wall, as someone did two years prior with Cattelan’s notoriously overripe banana titled “Comedian.” The banana, which once appeared on the cover of The Post, was not Cattelan’s only work to make it to the Guggenheim. In 2016, the artist installed a solid 18karat gold toilet in the NYC museum. It was an actual working potty in a small unisex restroom on the building’s fourth floor. The provocative piece was titled “America.” He told the Art Newspaper of the new pigeon work, “I am questioning the nature of how we display art, which is particularly important in the rigidity of an art fair . . . The pigeons are ‘observing’ from above the movements of the visitors below.”