Visitor eats $10.4m banana artwork at French museum

A visitor ate the Comedian artwork by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan at a French museum. Photo / AFP

A visitor to a French museum bit into a fresh banana worth millions of dollars taped to a wall last week, exhibitors said on Friday, in the latest such consumption of the conceptual artwork.

Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan, whose provocative creation entitled Comedian was bought for US$6.2 million ($10.4m) in New York last year, said he was disappointed the person did not also eat the skin and the tape.

After the hungry visitor struck on Saturday last week, “security staff rapidly and calmly intervened”, the Pompidou-Metz museum in eastern France said.

The work was “reinstalled within minutes”, it added.

“As the fruit is perishable, it is regularly replaced according to instructions from the artist.”

Cattelan noted the banana-eater had “confused the fruit for the work of art”.

“Instead of eating the banana with its skin and duct tape, the visitor just consumed the fruit,” he said.

Cattelan’s edible creation has sparked controversy since it made its debut at the 2019 Art Basel show in Miami Beach.

He has explained the banana work as a commentary on the art market, which he has criticised in the past for being speculative and failing to help artists.

The New York Post said the asking price of US$120,000 for Comedian in 2019 was evidence that the market was “bananas” and the art world had “gone mad”.

It has been eaten before.

Performance artist David Datuna ate Comedian in 2019, saying he felt “hungry” while inspecting it at the Miami show.

Chinese-born crypto founder Justin Sun last year forked out US$6.2m for the work, then ate it in front of cameras.

As well as his banana work, Cattelan is also known for producing an 18-carat, fully functioning gold toilet called America that was offered to US President Donald Trump during his first term in the White House.

A British court in March found two men guilty of stealing it during an exhibition in 2020 in the United Kingdom, from an 18th-century stately home that was the birthplace of wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill.

It was split up into parts and none of the gold was recovered.

– Agence France-Presse