Duct Tape Banana
Overview
Duct Tape Banana refers to the Art Basel Miami Beach exhibition featuring Maurizio Cattelan's piece entitled "Comedian," which is simply a banana duct-taped to the gallery wall. Soon after the banana sold for $120,000 in December 2019, it was eaten by a performance artist and the wall defaced with Epstein Didn't Kill Himself by a bystander.
Background
On December 3rd, 2019, Art Basel Miami Beach[7] hosted a gallery opening featuring Marizio Cattelan's piece "Comedian." The next day Art Net Journalist Sarah Cascone posted an image of the work to Instagram[3] saying that it was the "talk of the town" (shown below). The image post garnered over 1,150 likes in a week. Art Net[1] quoted Cattelan in saying, "Wherever I was traveling I had this banana on the wall. I couldn’t figure out how to finish it […] In the end, one day I woke up and I said ‘the banana is supposed to be a banana." The gallery owner and Cattelan set the work's price at $120,000 and it sold to a French buyer that night.
Development
Duct Tape Banana's Eating
On December 7th, 2019, New York City performing artist David Datuna took the banana off the wall and ate it (shown below).[2] The video reposted by YouTuber The Blast gained over 444,800 views in two days (shown below). Due to all the disruption surrounding the piece, Art Basel decided to temporarily take it down. [6]
The next day, 46-year-old Roderick Webber of Massachusetts was arrested for writing "Epstein Didn't Kill Himself" on the blank wall where the banana was taped. Twitter user @GiancarloSopo[5] tweeted pictures of the incident captioned, "The duct-taped banana at Art Basel is gone and has been replaced with “Epstein Didn’t Kill Himself,” which security quickly covered up" (shown below, left). The post accumulated over 6,700 retweets and 19,000 likes in a day. Another image of the wall was posted to r/pics[4] the next day and received over 100 points (83% upvoted) that day.
Online Reaction
News of the banana's eating inspired a series of memes that joked about the artwork, expressing criticism that "Comedian" was of low quality (examples below).
Search Interest
External References
[1] Artnet – Maurizio Cattelan Banana Art
[3] Instagram – sarahecascone
[5] Twitter – GiancarloSopo
[6] NYTimes – Banana Removed
[7] Art Basel – Miami Beach
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