Installations by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan are famously provocative, but his signature work — a banana taped to a wall — fell prey to a basic impulse: the hunger it provoked in a South Korean college student.
The art in question, Comedian, is a (frequently replaced) duct-taped banana that is meant to evoke everything from Charlie Chaplin's slapstick comedy to the fruit's status as an emblem of global trade.
It spoke to Noh Huyn-soo in simpler terms, reminding him that he had skipped breakfast that morning. So as his visit to Seoul's Leeum Museum of Art stretched past noon late last week, Noh seized the yellow fruit and ate it, ignoring the alarmed cry of a museum staffer.
It took Noh around 1 minute to yank the banana and eat it. When he was done, he reattached the peel to its spot on the wall.
https://www.npr.org/2023/05/01/1173039011/the-guy-who-ate-a-120-000-banana-in-an-art-museum-says-he-was-just-hungry
