Blurring the line between the worlds of high art and low snacking, a performance artist at a Miami art gallery has just indulged in one of the most expensive potassium refills in artistic history. Per TMZ, David Datuna was in attendance today at Miami’s Art Basel gallery—which recently made waves when it sold an installation by artist Maurizio Cattelan, consisting of a single banana duct-taped to a wall, for $120,000—when he decided to pull said art-fruit from its moorings, peel it, and then chow down. (Datuna’s review of Cattelan’s piece, as seen on his Instagram: “It’s very delicious.”)
Now, the conditions of Cattelan’s piece—titled “Comedian”—are such that this isn’t exactly the art heist/dine and dash of the century, since there are already stipulations in place to replace the fruit any time it reaches the full “time to put this in the freezer and then never remember to turn it into banana bread” stage of its artistic development. (The purchasers of Cattelan’s piece have technically bought the “idea” of a banana taped to a wall, rather than any actual fruit; they’ve also bought the “idea” of “Jesus Christ, are we really doing this? Fuck, I guess we are.”) Curators at the gallery still seemed pretty annoyed about it, though; eating art off the walls is rarely considered best practices in the gallery management world.
Really, the whole thing puts us in mind of Banksy’s self-destroying painting from last year, the one that was secretly designed to shred itself the moment it got sold. Say what you like about the attention-seeking behavior of pretty much everyone involved in either of these scenarios, though: At least Cattelan’s piece has the potential to alleviate your leg cramps if you come across it in a pinch.