Cattelan wins against artist who accused him of plagiarism for banana

Maurizio Cattelan wins against the artist who had accused him of plagiarism for his work Comedian, the now-infamous banana attached to the wall presented in 2019 at Art Basel Miami and sold in three copies at $120,000 each. The accusation dates back to last summer: a U.S. artist, Joe Morford, had accused Cattelan of plagiarizing his 2000 work Banana & Orange , which was registered that year with the U.S. Copyright Office and consisted of two green rectangular panels on which Morford had taped a banana and an orange. The American artist had then posted his work on YouTube (in 2008), on Facebook (in 2015) and on his personal website (in 2016). Morford had filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, where the artist resides, and his petition had been granted.

Cattelan’s lawyers, two months into the legal battle, had responded by claiming that Cattelan did not even know Morford, that the Padua-based artist had created his work without any knowledge of the Banana & Orange work, and that Morford could not establish that Cattelan had known the American’s banana before creating his own.

However, U.S. District Judge Robert Scola agreed with Cattelan, saying there was no evidence that the Venetian artist had seen Morford’s composition. And beyond that, the basic concept of the two works, namely “fixing a banana on a vertical plane using tape,” would not be protected by copyright law, according to the judge. In addition, the judge noted some differences, such as “the angle” at which the banana was oriented, and "the strict standards that Cattelan developed for the display of Comedian.“ Cattelan thus wins the first ”round" of the battle: it will have to be seen whether Morford will want to appeal. For the artist from Veneto, a new victory in a similar case after the one obtained in France in 2022.

Pictured is Cattelan’s work on the left, Morford’s on the right.

Cattelan wins against artist who accused him of plagiarism for banana

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