In a world where color triumphs over competence, modern art has become a symbol of absurdity, where meaning is often lost in the chaos of so-called “creativity.”

From splattered paint to minimalist installations, the more bizarre, incomprehensible, or deliberately simplistic the piece, the more it’s hailed as groundbreaking. But is it art or an elaborate scam designed by those who cannot add real value to society to fool us?

How else can you explain Maurizio Cattelan’s “Comedian,” essentially a yellow banana duct-taped to a wall selling for $6.2 million at a Sotheby’s auction?

The purchaser, Justin Sun, a Chinese-born cryptocurrency entrepreneur and business executive, explains everything.

“I’m thrilled to announce that I’ve bought the banana !!!  I am Justin Sun, and I’m excited to share that I have successfully acquired Maurizio Cattelan’s iconic work, Comedian for $6.2 million. This is not just an artwork; it represents a cultural phenomenon that bridges the worlds of art, memes, and the cryptocurrency community. I believe this piece will inspire more thought and discussion in the future and will become a part of history. I am honored to be the proud owner of the banana and look forward to it sparking further inspiration and impact for art enthusiasts around the world.

Additionally, in the coming days, I will personally eat the banana as part of this unique artistic experience, honoring its place in both art history and popular culture. Stay tuned!”

It’s unsurprising for someone hawking invisible money that can be used to create wealth without work and that can disappear forever with a computer crash.

It’s the delusions of the buyer that is being sold.

For most, purchasing modern art today feels less about acquiring beauty and more about buying into a pretense of culture and sophistication. High-priced pieces serve as status symbols rather than genuine expressions of creativity. People are not just collecting artwork—they are purchasing an image of themselves as connoisseurs, the “informed” few who understand the elusive meaning behind a piece.

The value of the art becomes secondary to its ability to signal social standing. It’s a world where a piece’s perceived depth and exclusivity are more important than its actual content or aesthetic, allowing individuals to project a particular intellectual or cultural superiority, even if the work lacks meaning or craftsmanship. In this sense, art becomes less about artistic expression and more about constructing an identity by acquiring expensive, often arbitrary, objects.

Today, modern art’s appeal lies not in its aesthetic beauty or even craftsmanship but in the lofty, pretentious language surrounding it. Terms like “conceptualism” and “deconstruction” are thrown around to convince us that art is something we must intellectually decode. It’s a game of smoke and mirrors, where the emperor’s new clothes are invisible to all but the self-proclaimed experts.

At its core, modern art often feels like a commercial ploy — a way to push high-priced, meaningless works on unsuspecting buyers while the “elite” in the art world nod in approval. What has happened to the art that was once about emotion, skill, and connection? Modern art, as it stands today, is often more about hype and selling a story than creating something of actual value.

While there are certainly exceptions, the modern art world is rife with empty gestures and overblown egos. Whether it’s an unmade bed or a can of soup, some artistic works raise the question: are these artists genuinely innovative or just masters of fooling the masses? In the end, perhaps the pretentious fools are the real artists — creating a culture that values hype over substance.

My foray into modern art.

I was doing some IT work for a prestigious Beverly Hills gallery that specialized in selling numbered prints for outrageous prices. I was bullshitting with one of the artists whose most memorable feature was not his artwork but oversized red plastic eyeglass frames against his rather traditional monochromatic black artist’s outfit.

I explained that any piece I could easily duplicate was not modern art and that scribbles did not convey meaning, such as clouds do not convey information through random shapes.

To prove my point, I used a computer paint program and mouse to create a work I laughingly called my self-portrait. Lo and behold, an art critic walked in and saw the image on the screen, and marveled at its intensity, authenticity, and pureness of thought. I couldn’t stop laughing for five minutes.

Bottom line…

I was thinking of an alternative piece to accompany the banana, created by dropping an egg on a blank canvas. Of course, the title would be “The Yoke’s On You.”

We are so screwed.

- Steve