Someone has eaten artist Maurizio Cattelan’s $6 million banana – again

CNN Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan s artwork featuring a fresh banana taped to a wall has been eaten by a visitor to a museum in France The piece titled Comedian was eaten by a gallery-goer at the Centre-Pompidou Metz in eastern France on July according to a comment from the museum published Monday The protection association acted fast and calmly according to internal procedures the gallery stated in the comment The artwork was reinstalled a sparse minutes later it disclosed adding that the banana is only a perishable element that is replaced on a regular basis according to Cattelan s instructions Centre-Pompidou Metz noted the artist was disappointed that the visitor had considered the fruit itself to be the artwork instead of eating the skin and the tape that held it in place as well The gallery has not filed a police record Comedian is intended to demonstrate the absurdity of financial speculation and the fragility of knowledge systems that underpin the art region it noted This is not the first time the artwork has been eaten In when Cattelan unveiled Comedian at the Art Basel Miami art fair in Florida performance artist David Datuna grabbed the banana from the wall before peeling and eating it in front of hundreds of stunned fair attendees This became one of the art world s biggest viral moments and the work sold with replacement banana for at the fair Then in an art aspirant took the banana from a wall at the Leeum Museum of Art in Seoul South Korea and ate it And in November Justin Sun a Chinese collector and founder of a cryptocurrency platform acquired Comedian for million at auction before eating the banana For now it is perhaps the most-eaten artwork of the last years Centre-Pompidou Metz disclosed in the announcement