logo
France museum-goer eats million-dollar banana taped to wall

France museum-goer eats million-dollar banana taped to wall

The Star5 days ago
A visitor to a French museum bit into a fresh banana worth millions of dollars taped to a wall last week, exhibitors said on Friday, in the latest such consumption of the conceptual artwork.
Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan - whose provocative creation entitled Comedian was bought for US$6.2mil (RM28.9mil) in New York last year - said he was disappointed the person did not also eat the skin and the tape.
After the hungry visitor struck on Saturday last week, "security staff rapidly and calmly intervened," the Pompidou-Metz museum in eastern France said.
The work was "reinstalled within minutes", it added.
"As the fruit is perishable, it is regularly replaced according to instructions from the artist."
Cattelan noted the banana-eater had "confused the fruit for the work of art".
"Instead of eating the banana with its skin and duct tape, the visitor just consumed the fruit," he said.
Cattelan's edible creation has sparked controversy ever since it made its debut at the 2019 Art Basel show in Miami Beach.
He has explained the banana work as a commentary on the art market, which he has criticised in the past for being speculative and failing to help artists.
The New York Post said the asking price of US$120,000 for Comedian in 2019 was evidence that the market was "bananas" and the art world had "gone mad".
It has been eaten before.
Performance artist David Datuna ate Comedian in 2019, saying he felt "hungry" while inspecting it at the Miami show.
Chinese-born crypto founder Justin Sun last year forked out US$6.2mil for the work, then ate it in front of cameras.
As well as his banana work, Cattelan is also known for producing an 18-carat, fully functioning gold toilet called America that was offered to Donald Trump during his first term in the White House.
A British court in March found two men guilty of stealing it during an exhibition in 2020 in Britain, from an 18th-century stately home that was the birthplace of wartime prime minister Winston Churchill.
It was split up into parts and none of the gold was ever recovered. - AFP
Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Venus Williams says she is engaged to model-actor Andrea Preti
Venus Williams says she is engaged to model-actor Andrea Preti

The Star

timean hour ago

  • The Star

Venus Williams says she is engaged to model-actor Andrea Preti

Photos: Andrea Preti/Instagram, Venus Williams/Instagram Venus Williams' winning return to the professional tennis tour also came with a surprise announcement: she is engaged. After becoming the second-oldest woman to win a tour-level singles match, Williams gave thanks to her fiance, who was in the stands at the DC Open. He is Andrea Preti, who is a Danish-born Italian model and actor, according to the website IMDB. The 45-year-old Williams hadn't played in a tournament in 16 months until entering the event in Washington. She won a doubles match on Monday and a singles match on Tuesday, before losing in doubles on Wednesday. Williams, who has won seven Grand Slam singles titles, is scheduled to face Magdalena Frech in the second round on Thursday night. – AP Venus Williams celebrates her win over Peyton Stearns during a match at the Citi Open tennis tournament Tuesday, July 22, 2025, in Washington. Photo: AP

'Fantastic Four' film feels like a beginning for Marvel's first family
'Fantastic Four' film feels like a beginning for Marvel's first family

New Straits Times

timean hour ago

  • New Straits Times

'Fantastic Four' film feels like a beginning for Marvel's first family

LOS ANGELES: For actor Ebon Moss-Bachrach, the superhero film "Fantastic Four: First Steps" is different from other Marvel films because it is centred on a close-knit family. "Our movie is about a family that's been a family for many years, and they undergo this transformation together, which brings them even closer," said Moss-Bachrach, who plays the character made of rocks named The Thing. "The Bear" actor added that love is at the heart of the movie, especially when it comes to being in a "precarious situation" as "the custodians of the world." Echoing this, Pedro Pascal, who plays the super stretchy scientist Reed Richards, feels like the cast is like a family. "We're in our family and kind of holding hands together, waiting for the movie to be released into the world," he said. Disney's "Fantastic Four: First Steps" introduces Marvel's first family as they face the cosmic threat of Galactus, an intergalactic planet eater, in a futuristic 1960s-inspired world. Joining Moss-Bachrach and Pascal are cast members Vanessa Kirby, who plays Reed's wife with invisibility powers named Sue Storm, and Joseph Quinn as Johnny Storm, who has fire powers. "Fantastic Four: First Steps," which scored a positive 87 per cent on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, arrives in theatres on Thursday. "True to its subtitle, the film feels like a fresh start," Peter Debruge of Variety wrote in a review. Pascal feels the key to stepping into his popular roles in projects like "Game of Thrones," "The Mandalorian" and "The Last of Us" has been studying the content. "I love paying attention to the legacy of characters and the legacy of material that you're stepping into. I love being a part of an adaptation or something that has previous authorship, because it helps me," he said. Daniel Loria, senior vice president at Boxoffice predicts that "Fantastic Four: First Steps" will open domestically at US$115 to US$135 million. While sales are currently around US$115 to US$125 million, he noted an increase in ticket purchases over the last week that will likely draw closer to the US$115 to US$135 million range. For director Matt Shakman, the film is a celebration of firsts in several different ways. "The DNA of the 'Fantastic Four' is the space race. So, first steps is an obvious reference to Neil Armstrong, and one small step for mankind," he said. "But it's also baby first steps, you know. So, the idea of what having a baby will do to a family and changing a family. Also, about first steps for Marvel's first family in the MCU, bringing them into the MCU for the first time," he added.

When streaming won't cut it and you need the DVD
When streaming won't cut it and you need the DVD

The Star

time5 hours ago

  • The Star

When streaming won't cut it and you need the DVD

Last month, a young man walked into Night Owl, a store in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn that sells Blu-rays, DVDs and even a few video cassettes of movies and television shows, and browsed for several minutes. Eventually he plucked a case from a shelf: A handsome Criterion Collection release of The Royal Tenenbaums, the first Wes Anderson movie he had ever seen. 'I had a ton of DVDs growing up,' Noah Snyder, 27, said. But reading about the way contemporary conglomerates treat films and television programs on their streaming services had prodded him to acquire physical media again. Snyder cited actress Cristin Milioti's recent comments about Made for Love, her show that was not only cancelled, but removed altogether from the HBO Max streaming platform. 'The stuff the CEOs do, they're bad decisions,' Snyder said. 'I don't want something I love to be taken away like that.' In the last decade or two, the story of physical copies of movies and television has been overwhelmingly one of decline. Blockbuster is essentially gone, streaming is ascendant, Netflix no longer sends DVDs through the mail, and Best Buy no longer stocks them in its stores. Many manufacturers have ceased making disc players. Retail sales of new physical products in home entertainment fell below US$1bil (RM4.26bil) last year, according to the Digital Entertainment Group, an industry association. Yet amid the streaming deluge, there are signs – small, tenuous and anecdotal, but real – of a rebellion. Alex Holtz, a media and entertainment analyst at International Data Corp, compared Blu-rays to vinyl albums. Holtz, an audiophile, gladly streams new music while on walks, but he buys records he loves. 'We're in a back-to-the-future moment,' he said. Similarly, some movie fans are deciding to reinvest in the old-fashioned notion of owning copies of movies and shows. They often look and sound superior to streaming and, at least as importantly, they can be held in your hands and, absent burglary or a covetous brother-in-law, they cannot be taken away. 'THINK: of your favorite film,' the producers of the 2022 indie comedy Hundreds of Beavers wrote in a viral manifesto last year, as they prepared to drop their physical release. 'Now think again: where's your personal copy? You probably 'stream' your movies – from some faceless, centralised data server. But WHO owns that server? WHO decides what stays and what goes?' The manifesto concluded, 'This isn't just about nostalgia – it's about survival: Blu-rays are freedom in the face of digital control.' Increasing numbers of film fans agree. 'People are getting wise to this idea that you don't really own the digital things you supposedly own, and the only way you truly own something is to own it physically,' said Aaron Hamel, who, with his business partner, Jess Mills, opened Night Owl earlier this year. There are hobbyists and collectors constantly building new shelf space and scanning notices of releases from obscure imprints. Johnathan Lyman, a software developer in Washington state, supplements his many streaming subscriptions with physical media. He subscribes to HBO Max, but he also has all of the seasons of Westworld, which streams there, on 4K Ultra HD – because, he said, it looks 'way better.' But perhaps more notable are the casual, less technically savvy, and younger cineastes who wish to own physical copies of their first Wes Anderson film, or the complete run of Twin Peaks, or the movies that were their favourites when they were 11. 'With streaming and with how things are being changed and banned and challenged, it feels important to keep movies I love,' said Avery Coffey, 25, the host of 'Unbound & Rewound,' a podcast about horror books and movies, who was also browsing Night Owl last month. Coffey bought a DVD of High School Musical recently, she said, 'to show the children in my family things that are important to me.' Buying a physical copy of your favourite movie is not a purely sentimental decision. When you stream, say, Casablanca, you are in effect renting it – it is available only so long as a streamer chooses to make it available and you choose to subscribe to the service (or, in the cases of free streamers, view advertisements). And when you buy Casablanca digitally, typically through Amazon, Apple or YouTube, you almost always are actually licensing it – and licenses can be revoked. Users of the anime service Funimation learned this the hard way last year, when the streamer was acquired and some earlier digital licenses were no longer honoured. And Amazon users allege in a pending class-action lawsuit that they misunderstood the nature of digital ownership, leading them to pay higher prices than they might have otherwise. Digital versions can also be altered by their owners. George Lucas added numerous computer-generated scenery and fauna to Star Wars, and even reversed a shootout between Han Solo and the bounty hunter Greedo; the version streaming on Disney+ is not the original. Streamers have removed nudity and cigarettes from films. Episodes of 30 Rock that used blackface were taken out of circulation at the creator Tina Fey's request. Netflix deleted a graphic scene from the first season of 13 Reasons Why two years after it released the show. 'When consumers purchase media, they believe they have a series of rights, including that of permanent possession: the ability to loan it, to give it away, to resell it,' said Aaron Perzanowski, a professor at the University of Michigan Law School. He added, 'We still see consumers being frustrated, outraged,' when they realise they do not have that right after they have bought something digitally. The streamers are fickle. Movies cycle on and off services (many outlets, including The New York Times, publish lists of movies on each one that are updated every month). And while physical media is often not cheap, the streamers' prices are also daunting: This year, the combined cost of ad-free subscriptions to, for instance, Netflix, HBO Max, Hulu and Criterion Channel summed to more than US$700. 'I continue to be an advocate for streaming, but it doesn't strike me as an either-or proposition,' said Jonathan Marlow, the executive director of Scarecrow Video, a nonprofit archive in Seattle. (Others include Kim's Video in New York and Vidiots in Los Angeles.) The streamers do not possess infinite films, Marlow noted. Netflix recently had around 16,000 titles; Scarecrow boasts nearly 150,000, many rentable by mail from across the country. 'When everyone says, 'Everything's available online' – which it isn't – they look at Scarecrow as an anachronism: 'Why should such a thing exist?'' Marlow said. 'It exists because people are not satisfied with the choices they already have.' For many fans, streaming itself – the unprecedented instant accessibility of thousands of movies and TV shows – has goosed demand for the earlier technology. 'The proliferation of media has maybe even overstimulated the appetite for newcomers to the world of film to be interested in film, and they suddenly discover that it's enjoyable both to watch something and to have something,' said Richard Lorber, the chair and CEO of Kino Lorber, which has a streaming service and also distributes physical copies of movies – and whose physical business, Lorber said, is up 15% this year. The Criterion Collection similarly views its streamer, the Criterion Channel, as 'a gateway back to physical media collecting,' the company's president, Peter Becker, said in an email. Another thing driving renewed interest in physical media is quality. A decent disc on a decent television typically provides stronger picture and sound than streaming. 'Those are highly compressed files, in order to pass across the internet easily,' Douglas McLaren, a film archivist at the University of Chicago, said of streaming. His university's film studies center does not have any streaming subscriptions, he said, relying instead on its library of more than 7,000 videos and discs and more than 3,000 film prints. What has maybe most marveled the more serious physical media boosters is how their hobby or passion has become kind of … cool. Criterion Closet videos, in which film personages stand in the middle of Criterion's roster of discs and excitedly snag their favourites off the shelves, has become a viral hit. And Williamsburg – a neighbourhood that has exported its sensibility across the world – now has a video store. 'We're older millennials,' Hamel, of Night Owl, said. 'We're shocked by the number of college-age people coming in and buying a couple US$5 DVDs to go home and watch together.' – ©2025 The New York Times Company This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into a world of global content with local flavor? Download Daily8 app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store