KITSCH HAS A MOMENT

Self-aware tackiness is back in a big way. In May, Jeff Koons reclaimed the title of most expensive living artist when his cartoonish stainless-steel sculpture Rabbit sold for $91.1 million at auction, narrowly surpassing the sum paid in 2018 for a David Hockney painting. But it was Kaws (real name Brian Donnelly) who truly turned art-market heads. The Kaws Album, a 2005 painting that parodies the album cover of the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band by crowding in characters from The Simpsons, sold in April for $14.8 million—a full 15 times the preauction estimate. By midyear, after a flurry of sales, the Brooklyn-based former graffiti tagger and unabashedly commercially minded image-maker stood second only to Koons in total sales revenue generated by an American contemporary artist. Maybe the Met Costume Institute was onto something when it chose “camp” as the theme of

For those who enjoy mocking contemporary art, it was a gift that kept giving. In early December, Italian mischief-maker Maurizio Cattelan arrived at Art Basel in Miami to unveil his latest work: a banana duct-taped to a gallery wall. Comedian quickly sold for at least $120,000 to buyers who compared the work to a Warhol. But Andy Warhol never created a work that could be eaten— which is exactly what a fellow artist did to Comedian days later. The stunt wasn’t Cattelan’s first. In 1999, he duct-taped his art dealer to a wall. In 2016, he created a functioning 18-karat gold toilet for New York’s Guggenheim Museum. This year, the same toilet was stolen while it was being exhibited at a palace in rural England. Who can question that? Outside the art world, a banana costs 35 cents; the gold in the toilet is worth $4 million.