{"id":14412,"date":"2025-07-22T02:33:09","date_gmt":"2025-07-22T02:33:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/14412\/"},"modified":"2025-07-22T02:33:09","modified_gmt":"2025-07-22T02:33:09","slug":"famous-6-2-m-banana-from-maurizio-cattelans-comedian-eaten-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/14412\/","title":{"rendered":"Famous $6.2 M. Banana from Maurizio Cattelan’s ‘Comedian’ Eaten Again"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tA visitor to France\u2019s Pompidou-Metz last week took a bite of into an iteration of Comedian (2019), Maurizio Cattelan<\/a>\u2018s infamous conceptual artwork that consists of a banana-duct taped to a wall, the museum announced on Friday. <\/p>\n

\n\tExhibitors said the visitor struck and ate the fruit on display at the museum in eastern France before \u201csecurity staff rapidly and calmly intervened.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe work was \u201creinstalled within minutes,\u201d the museum told AFP<\/a>, adding that as \u201cthe fruit is perishable, it is regularly replaced according to instructions from the artist.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\tRelated Articles<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"A<\/p>\n

\n\tComedian is currently one of 30 works by the Italian artist on display along with more than 400 works from the Mus\u00e9e National d\u2019Art Moderne in the exhibition \u201cThe Endless Sunday<\/a>\u201c, to celebrate the 15th anniversary of the Centre Pompidou-Metz<\/a>, an outpost of the Paris flagship institution. The show was co-curated by the artist and museum director Chiara Parisi.<\/p>\n

\n\tCattelan told the news outlet that he was disappointed the person did not also eat the skin of the banana as well as the grey duct tape holding it to the wall, noting that the banana-eater had \u201cconfused the fruit for the work of art.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cInstead of eating the banana with its skin and duct tape, the visitor just consumed the fruit,\u201d he told the AFP. <\/p>\n

\n\tComedian (2019) has attracted attention and controversy since its debut at Art Basel Miami Beach in 2019, where the first of the work\u2019s three editions sold for $120,000 by Perrotin. ARTnews previously reported that the Perrotin \u201cparted with the second edition for the same figure shortly afterward, before hiking the price by $30,000 for the third banana that was bought by the Guggenheim Museum.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tA second edition of the work famously sold at Sotheby\u2019s<\/a> last November, in the New and Contemporary Now auction for $6.24 million (including fees), more than four times its $1.5 million estimate, following roughly 10 minutes of bidding from seven bidders online, by phone, and in the room.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe winning bidder was revealed to be Justin Sun, a Chinese billionaire and founder of cryptocurrency platform TRON, who consumed it during a press conference <\/a>in Hong Kong nine days after the live auction in New York.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn addition to Sun and the recent incident at Centre Pompidou-Metz, Comedian has been consumed at least two other times.<\/p>\n

\n\tDuring its debut at Art Basel Miami Beach in 2019, performance artist David Datuna ate the banana at Perrotin\u2019s booth after saying he felt \u201chungry\u201d. It was also removed on the final morning of the fair<\/a> after drawing too much attention. And in 2023, an art student at Seoul National University also ate the fruit<\/a> while Comedian was on view as part of an exhibition on Cattelan at the Leeum Museum of Art in Seoul. The art student claimed he had skipped breakfast and was hungry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A visitor to France\u2019s Pompidou-Metz last week took a bite of into an iteration of Comedian (2019), Maurizio…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":14413,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[6225,6485,6486,9646,1120,96,9647,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-14412","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-centre-pompidou-metz","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-maurizio-cattelan","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14412","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14412"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14412\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}