Someone Ate The $120,000 Duct Tape Banana, Again

Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan’s controversial art piece, “Comedian,” made headlines back in 2019 after being sold for $120,000, a hefty price for a piece that is, quite literally, just a banana and a strip of duct tape.

Recently, the pricey fruit was eaten by “hungry” South Korean art student, Noh Huyn-soo, who was filmed casually removing the banana from its place on the wall of Leeum Museum of Art in Seoul, unpeeling and eating the whole thing, in front of a baffled audience of fellow art-lovers. Noh then stuck the empty banana skin back on the wall using the duct tape, before walking away with a cheeky grin.

When the museum asked Noh why he ate the banana, he replied that he was “hungry” after skipping breakfast, according to the Korea Herald. Noh later told the broadcaster KBS that he thought “damaging a work of modern art could also be [interpreted as] artwork” and that he came up with the idea to reattach the peel as “a joke.”

He noted: “I thought it would be interesting … isn’t it taped there to be eaten?”

Noh certainly has a point there; if an ordinary banana can be legitimized as a valuable work of art, than surely its public destruction is contributing to the narrative of the piece. At least, that was the excuse made by artist David Datuna, who also ate the banana back in 2019, describing his snack as “performance art.”

Three editions of “Comedian” were put up for sale at Miami Art Basel, with Datuna famously eating the third. Datuna criticized the artwork for embodying obscene wealth inequality and food insecurity, stating: “I have traveled in 67 countries around the world in the last three years, and I see how people live. Millions are dying without food. Then [Cattelan] puts three bananas on the wall for half a million dollars?”

Datuna went on to release an NFT (non-fungible token) collection of digital art to sell at auction, with the proceeds going to charity; like the duct-tape banana, the NFT trend was heavily criticized, with the pieces seen as absurdly overpriced and easily replicated. Ironically, if there were a digital successor to “Comedian,” NFTs would surely take the crown.

Turns out, it doesn’t really matter if “Comedian” is eaten, because the banana is replaced every three days, for obvious reasons. The banana is like an ongoing “Ship of Theseus” experiment, demonstrating that the original banana and strip of duct tape can be endlessly replaced, but the idea of “Comedian” lives on.

Cattelan, creator of “Comedian,” was reportedly told about the latest incident, and coolly replied: “No problem.”