Florida judge squashes copyright infringement lawsuit over Maurizio Cattelan’s banana

A choose in Florida has tossed artist Joe Morford’s copyright infringement lawsuit towards Maurizio Cattelan, wherein Morford claimed to have provide you with the thought for an paintings that includes a duct-taped banana practically 20 years earlier than Cattelan’s viral sensation Comic (2019) debuted at Artwork Basel in Miami Seashore. In a call on 9 June choose Robert N. Scola, Jr., a US district choose for the southern district of Florida, granted Cattelan’s movement for abstract judgement, closing the case.

Morford’s lawsuit hinged on similarities between Cattelan’s Comic and his personal work from 2001, Banana and Orange, which options plastic replicas of the titular fruits duct taped to 2 inexperienced panels. Nevertheless, choose Scola dominated that the similarities between the works had been inadequate, and Morford’s declare that Cattelan might need seen his work and been influenced by it unconvincing, to pursue allegations of copyright infringement.

“Comic merely comprises two (sic) many variations from Banana and Orange: the banana used, the angle at which it’s positioned, the strategy by which it’s taped to the background, the background itself and the exacting requirements that Cattelan developed for Comic’s show,” choose Scola’s ruling concludes. “To search out in any other case would additional restrict the already finite variety of methods wherein a banana could also be legally taped to a wall with out infringing on Morford’s work.”

Along with pointing to similarities between the works, Morford had claimed that Cattelan might have come throughout Banana and Orange in one in every of a number of on-line venues—on Fb, YouTube and a weblog publish. Cattelan, for his half, claimed that he had by no means heard of Morford previous to being sued by him, and had developed an early model of the work independently in 2018 as a canopy fee for New York Journal. In a declaration one in every of Cattelan’s studio staff, Jacopo Zotti, confirmed as a lot.

“Cattelan is the one social gathering who has put ahead any proof addressing the protection of unbiased creation,” Scola wrote in his ruling. “The court docket could, and does, credit score his declaration and the declaration of his worker.”

The choose’s ruling goes into nice element relating to two formal similarities that Morford’s declare hinged upon: the angle at which the banana in every work is affixed to the vertical floor, and the angle at which the adhesive tape crosses the banana. In every occasion and in remarkably exacting element, the choose outlines why such accusations are unconvincing.

“There are solely so many angles at which a banana will be positioned on a wall (360, to be exact, except one breaks the measurements down past levels—however making such a minute distinction can be reaching some extent of absurdity finest omitted of the courts and within the fingers of artists),” choose Scola wrote. “Discovering that Morford’s and Cattelan’s alternatives of various angles had been “shut sufficient” to achieve substantial similarity would essentially place a major authorized restrict on the variety of ways in which a banana will be taped to a wall with out copying one other artist’s work.”

Relating to the location of the tape, the choose wrote: “It’s, to place it bluntly, the apparent selection. Putting the tape parallel with the banana would cowl it. Putting multiple piece of tape over the banana, at any angle, would essentially obscure it. An artist searching for to tape a banana (or actually, any rectangular fruit or different family object) to a wall is subsequently left with “only some methods of visually presenting the thought”—all of which contain a chunk of tape crossing the banana at some non-parallel angle.”

Cattelan’s Comic was an instantaneous sensation at Artwork Basel in Miami Seashore in 2019, the place it debuted on Perrotin’s stand. Finally all three editions of the work, priced at $120,000 every, bought; one was subsequently gifted to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.

The recognition of Cattelan’s irreverent set up with collectors and viewers additionally made it a goal—for litigation and unsanctioned interplay. Throughout Artwork Basel in Miami Seashore, efficiency artist David Datuna eliminated Comic from the wall and ate the banana in a chunk he dubbed Hungry Artist (2019), which shaped the idea of a solo exhibition in New York the next 12 months. Earlier this spring, an artwork scholar in Seoul visiting the Leeum Museum of Artwork’s Cattelan exhibition took the banana, ate it and taped the peel again on the wall. The aspiring artist, Noh Huyn-soo, reportedly stated: “Isn’t it taped there to be eaten?”