A museum in eastern France reported to police on Sunday the theft of a banana that is a core part of a multimillion-dollar artwork by Italian visual artist Maurizio Cattelan.
The fruit was taped to a wall to form the provocative work Comedian. Its disappearance was noticed by a guard on Saturday.
An iteration of the artwork was bought by Chinese-born cryptocurrency founder Justin Sun in 2024. He forked out US$6.2 million for the work, then days later ate a banana in front of cameras in Hong Kong.
The Pompidou-Metz museum in Lorraine, which is a branch of the famous Pompidou Centre in Paris, said in a statement that it had lodged a criminal complaint for theft against persons unknown. It also said it had replaced the banana.
The artwork’s perishable banana centrepiece is replaced every three days to keep it contemporary.
Last July, a visitor to the museum ate the fruit. Guards quickly intervened and stuck up a replacement banana. Cattelan said at the time he was disappointed the hungry visitor had consumed only the banana and not the tape as well.
The museum did not take legal action in that instance.
This time, though, it decided to make its criminal complaint because the perpetrator was unidentified, and therefore “there is no possibility of dialogue”. It also said that “this is the second time this has happened”, and it felt it was an issue of respect for the artwork.
Cattelan’s edible creation, which aims to question the notion of art and its value, has sparked controversy ever since its debut at the 2019 Art Basel show in Miami Beach, Florida, with an asking price of US$120,000 (about HK$940,536).
A performance artist, David Datuna, ate Comedian at that 2019 show, saying he felt “hungry”.
As well as Comedian, 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 the toilet from an 18th century stately home in the United Kingdom, the birthplace of wartime prime minister Winston Churchill, during a 2020 exhibition.
It was split up into parts and none of the gold was ever recovered.
