The Musée Pompidou-Metz in eastern France, a branch of the famous Centre Pompidou in Paris, has reported the theft of Maurizio Catilan's conceptual and provocative artwork called "Comedian", widely known in cultural and media circles as the banana attached to the wall with gray duct tape.
The museum said in a statement published on Tuesday that a security agent noticed the absence of the artwork during an inspection tour on Sunday after the weekend, with the market value of the Italian artist's conceptual version estimated at 5.8 million euros, placing the incident in the category of major theft despite the renewed nature of the work itself.
The management of the Pompidou-Metz Museum has filed a formal criminal complaint against an unknown person for the alleged theft before the French judiciary, after technicians replaced the damaged banana with a fresh one, a routine procedure repeated every three days to maintain the structural freshness of the work.
The museum's management explained that its resort to the judiciary this time came as a result of the absence of any possibility of dialogue with the unspecified perpetrator, noting that this incident is the second of its kind in the history of the exhibition of the work at the museum after a hungry visitor ate it in July last year without prosecuting him at the time, stressing that the current procedure is related to imposing strict respect for the artistic protocol work.
Protocol of Authenticity and the Fate of Catilan's Looted Works
Catilan's edible work has sparked controversy since its 2019 art Basel premiere in Miami Beach with an opening price of $120,000, where it was eaten twice out of hunger, first by performer David Datona and the second by crypto founder Justin Sun, who bought one copy for €5.8 million and ate it in front of cameras in Hong Kong.
These paradoxes showed that the real value lies not in the fruit itself, but in the certificate of authenticity and the precise suspension protocol that requires the banana to be fixed at a height of 1.72 meters from the ground and at an inclination angle of 37°.
Belgian thread opens the file of the Grand Louvre robbery
In a related context, regarding the recent theft of some of the contents of the Louvre, French investigators moved to Belgian territory to continue intensive field investigations after a decisive analysis of suspicious data and telephone intersections, which gave the ongoing investigations into the robbery that affected the museum.
The French newspaper "Le Parisien" revealed that the unloading of the phone data of a number of suspects from Eastern European countries discovered in France, showed the presence of accurate communications and photos of the ancient "Apollon Exhibition" in the Louvre, highlighting logistical details about how the security protection system was breached and the French crown jewels were stolen.
The thieves succeeded in breaking into the Apollon exhibition on October 19, and within a few minutes seized a priceless historical and archaeological booty worth about 88 million euros.
The missing items included a diamond and emerald-set necklace that Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte presented to his wife, Empress Marie-Louise, historic jewellery belonging to Queens Marie Amélie and Ortens, as well as the famous pearl and diamond crown of Empress Eugenie III, wife of Napoleon III.
Joint press reports by journalists from Le Parisien and the Belgian company "La Vennier" confirmed that the French authorities are counting on upcoming hearings to be held this week with French detainees who have shown a preliminary willingness to reveal the secret stores of historical jewelry, in exchange for concluding judicial deals that will ensure the reduction of the sentences issued against them and the complete dismantling of the international network.