The article discusses a conceptual art object consisting of a real banana attached to a wall at a specific angle.
Banana attached to the wall with tape / © Associated Press
In the French city of Metz, one of the most famous contemporary art installations, a banana taped to a wall as part of Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan’s work “Comedian,” has disappeared from the Centre Pompidou museum.
This is reported by BILD.
According to the museum, a guard noticed the absence of the object during a routine check of the exhibition over the weekend. However, the installation was quickly restored — a new banana was reattached to the wall following the artist’s protocol.
The scandalous banana worth 6 million euros has disappeared from the museum in Metz again / © Associated Press
It is a conceptual art object comprising a real banana affixed to a wall at a specific angle. As the fruit is perishable, it is regularly replaced, and the artwork itself exists as an idea and instruction rather than a permanent object.
The museum reminds that the installation has been the subject of incidents numerous times before. For instance, visitors have on several occasions eaten the banana during the exhibition, necessitating its replacement.
The first high-profile incident occurred in 2019 at Art Basel in Miami, when artist David Datuna removed the banana from the wall and ate it, calling it a performance. Subsequently, similar incidents have recurred in other countries.
In 2024, the installation gained even greater notoriety: entrepreneur Justin Sun purchased the banana for nearly 6 million euros, after which he also ate it, explaining it as a gesture within the framework of an art project.
Curators emphasize that the work’s concept lies in re-evaluating the value of art and its material form. Consequently, even the act of the banana’s “disappearance” is not considered destruction of the artwork — it is simply recreated according to the author’s instructions.
As a reminder, in Italy, archaeologists discovered a vast hoard of late Roman bronze coins, numbering between 30,000 and 50,000 specimens.
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