I mean, it’s one Banana, what much could it cost, $120,000? On Thursday, April 27, one university student in South Korea learned a very Bluth-ian truth, sparking outrage, confusion, and a whole lot of schadenfreude, after chowing down the banana from “Comedian,” a conceptual art piece featuring the fruit duct taped to the wall at Seoul’s Leeum Museum of Art.


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An iteration of Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan’s controversial work, which famously sent the art world into an existential spiral after its controversial debut at the 2019 Art Basel, the unnamed Seoul National University student did what we’ve all wanted to do –  eating the banana and re-taping the peel back onto the wall.


While at first, the student told museum officials that he ate the banana as he was hungry after skipping breakfast, his story quickly took a Banksy-an turn, per Korea Herald.



In an interview following the incident with another local outlet, he explained how his snack was more than just that – elaborating how “damaging a work of modern art could also be (interpreted as a kind of) artwork” and that sticking the peel back on the wall was merely a “joke.”


“I thought it would be interesting,” he mused, per Forbes. “Isn’t it taped there to be eaten?”


Though the answer, unfortunately, was a resounding “no,” this wannabe-Abramović was largely let off the hook, the museum declining to charge him with damages, likely as the bananas are swapped out every 2-3 days.



As a buyable art piece that once sold for $120,000, “Comedian” (controversially) only consists of an authenticity certificate and display instructions. The rest is simply BYOB … ADT (Bring Your Own Bananas And Duct Tape).


Yet, this isn’t the only instance in which someone let the intrusive thoughts win around “Comedian,” the business outlet noted. Shortly after the work’s Art Basel debut, artist David Datuna also ate the banana in what he dubbed a work of “performance art.”


“I have traveled in 67 countries around the world in the last three years, and I see how people live,” Datuna mused on his act.


“Millions are dying without food,” he elaborated before criticizing Cattelan for putting “three bananas on the wall for half a million dollars.”


As the world’s premier banana expert, Gwen Stefani once put it – “this shit is bananas, B-A-N-A-N-A-S.”