Bought for 35 cents, sold for $5.2 million, then eaten... The crazy adventures of Maurizio Cattelan's famous taped banana

The world's most famous banana has been bitten into again. A visitor to the Centre Pompidou-Metz ate the famous fruit, part of Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan's Comedian exhibition, the museum announced Friday, July 18. And this isn't the first time. Since its presentation in 2019, this simple banana taped to the wall has experienced multiple twists and turns and just as many controversies... which continue to increase its value in the contemporary art world.

Works sold for up to several million dollars...

The work Comedian was first presented in 2019 at the contemporary art fair Art Basel in Miami, USA. It is a real banana taped to a wall of the booth of French gallery owner Emmanuel Perrotin. The latter announced at the time that he had sold, immediately after its presentation, the first two copies of the work, at the listed price of $120,000. The first buyers were Sarah Andelman, co-founder of the concept store Colette, and Billy and Beatrice Cox, heirs of the Bancroft family, according to the media Connaissance des arts . The last copy was sold for $150,000 to an anonymous collector. One of the copies was then donated to the Guggenheim Museum in New York.

In addition to the banana and the piece of tape, buyers received an instruction manual, specifying that the fruit must be placed 1.72 meters from the ground, at a 37-degree angle. The owner, however, is responsible for providing the fresh bananas and replacement tape... who can still count on obtaining a certificate of authenticity. Because despite the apparent simplicity of Comedian , Maurizio Cattelan has always maintained that it was indeed a work and not a joke. The artist had also created versions in bronze and resin before his final choice. "Everywhere I traveled, I had this banana hanging on the wall. I didn't know how to finish it. Finally, one day, I woke up and said to myself: 'This banana is supposed to be a banana,'" the artist confided to an Artnet journalist .

All that remained was to exhibit it among the paintings and find buyers. "A work like this, if you don't sell it, it's not a work of art," explained gallery owner Emmanuel Perrotin in 2019. A successful bet. And that was only the beginning... Five years later, in November 2024, one of the copies of the work was purchased at auction for $5.2 million by the Chinese Justin Sun, founder of the cryptocurrency platform Tron. "No other work of the 21st century has caused as much scandal, sparked the imagination and overturned the very definition of contemporary art as Maurizio Cattelan's Comedian," wrote Sotheby's in the sale catalog.

...after being bought on the street for 35 cents...

But where did the bananas taped by Maurizio Cattelan come from? The New York Times asked the question during the 2024 Sotheby's auction in New York. And the answer was right on the sidewalk. The seller is a man named Shah Alam, who owns a street stall and advertises the fruit for... 35 cents. When a reporter came to tell him that one of his bananas had sold for $5.2 million, the 74-year-old man started to cry. "I'm poor. I've never had so much money; I've never seen so much money," he said. However, he received nothing from this fine sale.

The publication of this article and the story of this man, originally from Bangladesh, have once again reignited debates around the value of contemporary works of art. When asked about this, the buyer of the work, Justin Sun, said he was moved by Shah Alam's response and that "his role in this work was not taken lightly." Maurizio Cattelan also reacted to this story. "The banana seller's reaction touches me deeply, highlighting how art can resonate in unexpected and profound ways," he wrote, before adding: "However, art, by its very nature, does not solve problems; if it did, it would be politics."

…and eaten by several visitors and one of its owners

Over the course of exhibitions and sales, the famous banana has also been bitten into several times! The first gourmand is David Datuna, a contemporary artist of Georgian origin who simply detached and tasted the work of Maurizio Cattelan at his first exhibition in 2019, at the contemporary art fair Art Basel in Miami, saying to the stunned public: "Respect Maurizio!" "I am the first artist to eat the art of another artist," he then boasted during a press conference which gave him great publicity.

Two and a half years later, in 2023, it was a Korean student's turn to swallow the banana during an exhibition of the Italian artist's work at the Leeum Museum of Art in Seoul. The young man said he felt "hungry" after skipping breakfast. "Damaging a work of art can also be seen as a work of art, I thought it would be interesting... Isn't it taped there to be eaten?" he said in comments relayed by the BBC.

The following year, it was entrepreneur Justin Sun's turn to swallow the precious fruit . But this time, the man was also the owner of the work, having purchased it for the tidy sum of $5.2 million a week earlier. "It's much better than other bananas. It's really good," he joked after swallowing the first bite during a press conference.

Finally, the latest episode: a visitor to the Pompidou Centre in Metz, in turn, ate the banana on display. "I just wanted to taste a fruit worth 6 million dollars," the Dutchman explained to the Républicain lorrain . As always, the work "was reinstalled within minutes," the museum said, and no complaint was filed. But the artist still reacted. Maurizio Cattelan regretted that the visitor "confused the fruit with the work itself" : "Rather than eating the banana with its skin and its scotch, the visitor simply consumed the fruit."