In Pictures: Losing it over a banana

People look at Maurizio Cattelan's artwork, a fresh banana duct-taped to a wall, titled 'Comedian' during a press preview at Sotheby's in New York on October 25, 2024. The Italian artist's provocative work of conceptual art was bought for $6.2 million by a cryptocurrency entrepreneur at a New York auction. 'The work invites us to question what this work says about us as viewers", Catalan told the Italian daily La Repubblica, "It's the market that has decided to take a banana stuck on the wall so seriously. If the system is so frail to slip on a banana skin, maybe it was already slippery."

Performance artist David Datuna is seen at the Art Basel show after eating the artwork 'Comedian' by the artist Maurizio Cattelan in Miami Beach, Florida, on December 7, 2019. David muttered, 'Hungry artist,' before proceeding to eat the banana taped to a wall. As it turned out, the value of the work is in the certificate of authenticity, so the banana was simply replaced.

A banana is taped to the shirt of a janitor at a protest against low wages paid by cleaning contractors SFM Services, Pritchard Industries, and CRS Facility Services on December 11, 2019, in Miami, Florida. The workers wore the bananas as part of a play on Maurizio Cattelan's art piece at Art Basel, which sold for more than $120,000. Miami janitors are some of the lowest paid in the nation.

Artist Andy Warhol's print rendition of a banana on the cover of a debut studio album by the art-rock band The Velvet Underground & Nico in March 1967, an experimental album featuring elements of noise and dissonance that would change music. On this 1996 CD reissue, the banana image is on the front cover, while the image of a peeled banana is on the inside of the jewel case, beneath the CD itself.

Altered graffiti by British artist Banksy adorns concrete blocks on the Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square) in Kyiv, Ukraine, on July 21, 2022. German artist Bananensprier (Thomas Baumgärtel) added a banana in Ukrainian national colours--blue and yellow--next to Banksy's work.

A woman wearing a face mask carries a baby as she walks past graffiti of a banana-stuffing Trump, a satirical take by the Portuguese artist Kilos, in Baixa, Portugal, on April 24, 2021.

A large banner seen on the facade of a building in Cologne, western Germany, shows an image by German artist Bananensprier (Thomas Baumgaertel) of Russian President Vladimir Putin in prison clothes, a banana hanging limply from his head, on July 3, 2023

A work by US sculptor Tony Matelli titled "Lion (Bananas)" on display at the Tuileries Gardens in Paris on October 16, 2023, as part of the Paris+ fair by Art Basel. 

A woman looks out at the crowd around a sculpture consisting of a large heap of bananas by London-based artist Doug Fishbone as part of an art exhibition on October 05, 2004, in Trafalgar Square, London. The public was invited to take away the bananas for free later in the day.

A sculpture titled "The yellow banana loaders" seen at the exhibition of the Guatemalan artist Margarita Azurdia at The Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid, Spain on November 23, 2022.  The show presents the unique work of a symbolic figure with a restless, playful, transgressive spirit that permeates the Guatemalan artistic context of the second half of the 20th century.

People stand next to a sculpture of a shark wrapped in a banana called 'Sharnana' by artist Drew McDonald during the 'Sculpture by the Sea' exhibition on a headland near Sydney's Bondi Beach on October 17, 2024.

Actors from Bilbao-based  2theatre are joined by tourists for a massive synchronised banana eating in front of City Chambers to promote their show 'Losing It!' on the Royal Mile during the 70th Edinburgh Fringe Festival on August 21, 2017 in Edinburgh, Scotland.

An illustration of butterflies and a lizard on a ripe banana from the book Das Kleine Buch der Tropicwunder, ca. 19th century.  From the pages of the Ragamala Series circa 1760, a prince speaks to his beloved, who stands beneath a flowering banana tree.

Singaporean Kelvin Tan, the co-owner of 99 Old Trees, a durian shop in Singapore, poses with his parody of the $120,000 artwork "Comedian" by Maurizio Cattelan on December 12, 2019.  Inspired by the banana artwork, Tan put his own spin on the piece, captioning it "looks like art, smells like fart" in a widely-shared post.