Artist puts banana taped on wall on sale for £91,000

Miami: Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan, the creator of the now-stolen golden toilet, has put on sale a banana duct-taped to a wall for a whopping 91,000 pound, a media report said.

Entitled 'Comedian', it is a reflection of a Lucille Bluth Arrested Development joke about rich people not knowing the price of a banana.

The piece is the final of the three editions already sold, with the last going for even more money, the Mirror said. Cattelan had earlier created unusual comedic pieces, like a fully functional 18-karat gold toilet titled 'America', since stolen from Oxfordshire's Blenheim Palace.

Cattelan purchased the fruit at a local market probably for around 20 pence before it was put up for sale at an art gallery in Miami, Florida.

It was presented on Wednesday at the Art Basel Miami Beach by Perrotin, a contemporary art gallery founded in Paris long associated with the Italian artist. People have since been taking selfies with the fixture on the wall.

A press statement from the Perrotin gallery said the artist came up with the idea a year ago, envisaging it then as a sculpture instead.

"He made several models: First in resin, then in bronze and in painted bronze (before) finally coming back to the initial idea of a real banana."