On a Saturday afternoon at the Centre Pompidou-Metz in eastern France, a visitor approached Maurizio Cattelan’s “Comedian” — a fresh banana duct-taped to a wall — peeled it from its mounting, and ate it. The museum filed a complaint for the “damage to the respect owed to exhibited works” and swiftly replaced the fruit, restoring the installation to its original state. It was not the first time the piece had been consumed: since its debut at Art Basel Miami Beach in 2019, when performance artist David Datuna plucked and ate the banana before a startled crowd, the work has been eaten by a South Korean art student, by the Chinese collector Justin Sun after purchasing an edition for $6.24 million, and now by an unknown visitor in Metz. The museum describes “Comedian” as a commentary on “the absurdity of financial speculation and the fragility of the knowledge systems that underpin the art market.”

The same week, that market demonstrated its capacity for staggering sums. At Sotheby’s in London, the first evening of the Joe Lewis Collection sale brought £296.3 million, driven by Amedeo Modigliani’s “Nu assis au collier”, which fetched £48.2 million — a European auction record for the artist, according to the auction house. Gustav Klimt’s “Portrait of Gertrud Loew” sold for £36.2 million, and Lucian Freud’s “Sleeping by the Lion Carpet” reached £29.3 million. The total approached the European record for a private collection set in 2009 by the Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé sale. Viewed from London, the evening confirmed that the highest tier of the art trade remains insulated from wider economic unease, with trophy works still commanding fierce competition.

Far from the auction room’s choreographed bidding, a more serendipitous discovery unfolded in a Paris suburb. During a drug raid on 15 June in Champigny-sur-Marne, police searching the home of a suspected trafficker’s aunt stumbled upon a painting attributed to Pablo Picasso. French authorities have not yet authenticated the work, but according to French press reports it may be a portrait of Marie-Thérèse Walter, the artist’s muse and lover between 1927 and 1935. Investigators believe the canvas was stolen from a Singaporean collector by an employee of a Paris art storage facility, who claimed he acted to expose security failings. Alongside the painting, officers seized 17 kilograms of cannabis, luxury clothing valued at €200,000, and nearly €7,000 in cash. The judicial investigation for theft and handling stolen goods continues, while specialists examine the work to confirm its provenance.

Across the Atlantic, a quieter but no less telling sale unfolded. Miller & Miller Auctions in Canada offered works by the Nova Scotian folk artist Maud Lewis, whose brightly coloured rural scenes and cat paintings have attracted a devoted following. Two feline works each sold for well over $40,000, including buyer’s premium. Ethan Miller, the auction house’s chief executive, noted that demand “remains very strong” and that consignments came from families who had bought directly from Lewis decades ago, as well as from Ontario and the United States — a reminder of the tourists who carried her paintings home from visits to Nova Scotia in the 1950s and 1960s. Alan Deacon, a retired teacher who has collected Lewis’s work for more than half a century, observed that her recognition grew slowly but now rests on a “distinctive style, authenticity and optimism” unmatched in North America. A new exhibition, “Maud Lewis: Coming Home”, opened in Yarmouth in June, offering what Deacon called one of the finest displays of her work he has seen.

In Metz, the banana was replaced. The museum’s prompt restoration of the perishable component ensured that “Comedian” could continue its cycle of provocation and consumption — a loop that, like the art market itself, feeds on the tension between the ephemeral and the priceless.