The Banana, Creativity, and the Mistake We Make When We Judge Art
A banana taped to a wall sold for a six-figure price.
Another artist later ate the banana, documented the act, and turned that into a second artwork.
Predictably, most reactions focused on outrage or ridicule.
But the banana itself isn’t the real subject here. It’s simply a convenient entry point into a much deeper conversation about creativity, art, and how humans relate to meaning.
If we reduce this moment to “that’s stupid” or “this is a con,” we miss something important—not about the banana, but about ourselves.
The Question That Is Too Big to Answer Directly
The first question people ask is always:
Is this really art?
That question is understandable—and also deeply problematic.
The moment we decide something isn’t art, we quietly place ourselves in the position of defining what art is. And that definition has never been stable across history, cultures, or even individuals.
A more honest and useful statement is this:
“This doesn’t do anything for me.”
That keeps the judgment grounded in subjective experience, rather than pretending there’s an objective line separating “real art” from “fake art.”
Taste is real. Authority over meaning is not.
The Apple Response (And Why It’s Accidentally Creative)
One of the most common reactions I heard was:
“Fine. Next time I’ll tape an apple to the wall and call it art.”
Ironically, that response contains a real creative act.
Here’s what happens cognitively:
- You observe a banana taped to a wall
- You abstract it to fruit taped to a wall
- You generate a new instance: an apple
That’s a creative step—a small one, but genuine.
This is how creativity often begins: not with genius, but with abstraction and recombination.
Two Broad Modes of Creativity
Creativity exists on a spectrum, but it can roughly be divided into two modes:
1. Combinatorial creativity
Rearranging existing elements into new configurations.
Most design, pop music, advertising, and everyday problem-solving live here.
2. Revolutionary creativity
Changing the rules of the game—or inventing a new one entirely.
This kind of creativity is rare, risky, and often misunderstood at first.
Both are necessary. Confusing one for the other leads to bad judgments about art.
Why Ridicule Feels So Tempting
It’s emotionally satisfying to dismiss something strange or unfamiliar.
Ridicule creates distance.
Distance creates safety.
But art—especially modern or conceptual art—often operates near the boundary of what feels ridiculous. That’s not an accident.
There’s a reason art and humor overlap so closely.
Both:
- Break expectations
- Expose contradictions
- Communicate indirectly
In fact, humor may be best understood as a subset of art—a mechanism for delivering meaning through surprise and subversion.
The “Emperor Has No Clothes” Effect
Art frequently provokes an uncomfortable question:
“Am I missing something—or is this nonsense?”
That tension is intentional.
Art doesn’t just express beauty; it tests perception. It reveals how much of meaning comes not from the object itself, but from context, expectation, and interpretation.
That’s why art so often feels philosophical—even when it looks absurd.
Why Declaring “That’s Not Art” Backfires
Saying “that’s not art” feels like clarity, but it actually shuts down curiosity.
A better posture is:
- You don’t have to like it
- You don’t have to defend it
- You do benefit from asking what it’s trying to do
Art doesn’t demand approval. It demands attention.
And attention is where creativity begins to work on us.
Art as a Bridge Between the Inner World and Reality
To understand why art matters at all, it helps to think about how a human being is structured.
At the core, we have emotions and motivations. These exist before language and often before conscious thought. On top of that sit thoughts, then words, and finally actions—the things we actually do in the world.
Surrounding all of this is experience. Experience lives at the boundary between what we already know and what we don’t yet understand.
That boundary matters.
Because no matter how much we learn, the unknown always remains vastly larger than the known.
Art exists precisely at that boundary.
Why Art Can Reach Places Words Can’t
Most tools we use to communicate work in a straight line:
thought → words → action
Art doesn’t follow that path.
Art moves through all layers at once.
A piece of music, a painting, or even a joke can bypass language entirely and still trigger emotion, memory, insight, or discomfort. That’s why art can make us feel something we’ve never felt before—or feel something familiar in a way we didn’t know was possible.
This is also why art often feels powerful without being easily explainable.
It’s not vague.
It’s pre-verbal.
Implicit Knowledge: The Things You Know Without Knowing You Know Them
Many creative people struggle to explain their own process.
That’s not a failure of intelligence—it’s a feature of creativity.
A lot of what drives creation is embodied knowledge: patterns learned through experience, repetition, and intuition. You act on them long before you can describe them.
This is why a composer, dancer, or designer often does the right thing before they can articulate why it works.
Art gives form to this implicit knowledge.
It makes the invisible visible.
Two Kinds of Thinking Inside the Mind
There’s another distinction that matters here.
First, there are emergent thoughts—ideas that surface seemingly from nowhere. They rise up from deep cognitive layers, like something breaking the surface of water.
Second, there are deliberate thoughts—the kind we can analyze, compare, refine, and manipulate once they appear.
Art often operates before deliberate thought takes over.
That’s why your reaction to art is emotional first:
- confusion
- irritation
- delight
- laughter
Only afterward do you begin to rationalize what you felt.
Music as a Special Case of Art
Music is a particularly revealing example because it doesn’t rely on language at all.
Instead, it uses patterns as metaphor.
Music lives somewhere between emotion and thought:
- not quite feeling
- not quite language
It organizes time, tension, expectation, and release—mirroring how emotions themselves unfold.
That’s why music can communicate meaning even when words fail entirely.
Why Predictable Creativity Feels Safe (and Limited)
Much of what we call “creative” in everyday life never leaves familiar territory.
Pop songs follow known structures.
Visual design often rearranges existing styles.
Even clever marketing frequently recombines proven ideas.
This kind of creativity is useful—but it stays close to the known.
True creation, in a deeper sense, requires moving into unknown territory. And that move is uncomfortable by definition.
Why Creativity Must Be Destructive
Here’s the part most people don’t like to hear:
Real creativity destroys more than it creates.
Most new ideas don’t work.
Most experiments fail.
Most art doesn’t last.
This isn’t a bug. It’s how the system functions.
Destruction clears space for something new.
Volcanic lava destroys everything it touches—yet creates some of the most fertile land on Earth. Creativity works the same way.
Failure Is Not a Side Effect — It’s the Cost
If creativity only produced success, nothing would ever change.
We need:
- many bad ideas
- many failed attempts
- many ridiculous experiments
So that once in a while, something meaningful emerges and expands what we know.
That’s the real context behind the banana taped to a wall.
Why Most New Art Is Bad (and Has to Be)
When we look back at history, it’s tempting to believe that the past was full of masterpieces.
It wasn’t.
What we see now is what survived—after decades or centuries of filtering.
For every piece of music, art, or literature we still celebrate, there were countless works that disappeared. Not because people weren’t creative, but because most creative output doesn’t endure.
This isn’t tragic. It’s structural.
Creativity produces abundance; history produces scarcity.
Misunderstood in Their Own Time
Many artists we now consider foundational were dismissed, mocked, or misunderstood when their work first appeared.
Critics of Beethoven’s late string quartets thought he had lost his way. The music was strange, fragmented, and difficult to categorize. Today, those same works are considered among the most profound ever written.
The pattern repeats across disciplines:
- Art
- Music
- Science
- Business
Radical ideas rarely feel comfortable when they arrive.
Why Judgment Ages Poorly
Quick judgment feels efficient, but it rarely ages well.
When we decide too early that something is meaningless, we often reveal more about our own limits than about the work itself. That doesn’t mean every experiment deserves praise—but it does mean every experiment deserves space.
Creativity needs room to fail loudly.
Why Creativity Can’t Be Graded
Here’s the paradox:
To grade something, you need a rubric.
But creativity is the act of inventing the rubric.
That’s why creativity resists measurement, standardization, and checklists. The moment something becomes fully measurable, it usually stops being creative and starts being procedural.
Creativity defines the future standard. It doesn’t conform to the present one.
The Cost of Becoming a Judge
When you position yourself as a judge of creativity, you close off the upside.
Judgment narrows perception.
Curiosity expands it.
This doesn’t mean liking everything. It means staying open long enough to see whether something unfamiliar contains value—even if it ultimately fails.
The danger isn’t bad art.
The danger is shutting down the mechanism that allows good art to exist.
The Real Function of Art in Human Life
Art exists to mediate between:
- what we feel
- what we know
- what we can express
- and what we haven’t yet discovered
It stretches the known into the unknown and brings pieces of the unknown back with it.
Most of the time, it returns empty-handed.
Every once in a while, it brings something essential.
The Better Question to Ask
Instead of asking:
“Is this art?”
Ask:
“What is this trying to do?”
“What reaction is it provoking?”
“What boundary is it testing?”
Those questions keep creativity alive—both in culture and in yourself.
Creativity is seeing what everyone else sees—and thinking what no one else thinks.
That requires tolerance for failure, discomfort, and occasionally, ridiculous-looking ideas taped to walls.
The banana isn’t the point.
Openness is.
FAQs
Why do people consider a banana taped to a wall a work of art?
Because it functions as conceptual art. The meaning isn’t in the banana itself, but in the reaction, context, and questions it provokes about value, creativity, and interpretation.
Does calling something art mean it’s good art?
No. Art and quality are separate judgments. Something can be art and still be ineffective, uninteresting, or unsuccessful.
Why does modern art often feel intentionally provocative?
Because art explores boundaries—emotional, psychological, social, and philosophical. Provocation is often how those boundaries become visible.
Is humor a form of art?
Yes. Humor uses timing, metaphor, and subversion to communicate meaning, often bypassing rational defenses in the same way art does.
Why does creativity involve so much failure?
Because novelty requires exploration of the unknown. Most attempts won’t work, but that excess failure is what allows meaningful breakthroughs to emerge.
- Curious how these ideas translate into strategy, systems, or execution? Email me at [email protected].
This essay connects to the Meaning knowledge hub:
https://gabebautista.com/essays/meaning/
