Art Basel's $120,000 Banana Installation Eaten By Another Artist

MIAMI, FL — Any time that you duct tape a banana to a wall and call it art, you have to figure there's going to be a chance of monkey business. That's exactly what happened at Art Basel in Miami on Saturday when one artist found another's just a little too appealing.

New York-based performance artist David Datuna happened upon a piece in which a banana is duct taped to a wall. It was a piece called, "Comedian" by Maurizio Cattelan, an artist from Tblisi who now lives in Italy.

The banana has been the hit of Basel since the show opened last week and the piece reportedly just sold for $120,000. It wasn't just the banana that the buyer got. It came with a 12-page book of instructions on how to install it.

On Saturday, Datuna walked up to the banana, calmly removed he duct tape, peeled the banana, and starting eating it as people looked on with looks ranging from amusement to horror.

Datuna later posted video of the aftermath to his Instagram page.

"Are you kidding," an official at the show asked Datuna. "Did you really do that?"

He said that he did and, as he was led away by security officers, told the crowd, "See you after jail."

In the end, Datuna was not arrested. The banana was replaced.

Cattelan's name was in the news earlier this year when an earlier work – a gold-plated toilet was stolen from Winston Churchill's childhood home where it had been installed.