An artist surprised people at an Art Basel show in Miami yesterday when he took a banana stick to the gallery wall and ate it.
The banana, a part of Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan’s ‘Comedian’, was sold to a French collector for $120,000.
In a video posted to his Instagram account, David Datuna, who describes himself as a Georgia-born American artist in New York, walked up to the banana tree before picking up the fruit.
This happened and here’s the video: someone ripped the Maurizio Cattelan banana off the wall at @ArtBasel and ATE IT 🍌 pic.twitter.com/JOL41jLoeY
— JiaJia Fei 费嘉菁 (@VAJIAJIA) December 7, 2019
“It’s an art show, a starving artist”, he said, removing the bananas and biting the fruit.
“Thank you very much”, he said.
Some onlookers laughed before the angry gallery staff pulled him to another area for questioning.
The scene, however, was successfully completed without any incident.
According to a press report, the true value of the work lies in the uniqueness and originality of the ideas and bananas being replaced by new ones.
It was re-attached to the work about 15 minutes after Datuna’s shock.
“His actions sparked tension and attracted unexpected attention. But the feedback was very good. It makes the audience entertained”, said museum director Lucien Terras.
Los Angeles based progressive activist Ryan Knight censured the act at his twitter account with 362K followers: “40 million Americans are living in poverty and struggling to put food on the table and somebody just paid $120,000 for F****** banana duct-taped to a wall.
40 million Americans are living in poverty and struggling to put food on the table and somebody just paid $120,000 for a f***ing banana duct-taped to a wall. https://t.co/JTJNcVaums
— Ryan Knight 🏳️🌈🗽 (@ProudResister) December 8, 2019
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