The director of Poland’s National Museum of Culture has announced that he will temporarily reinstate a classic 1975 work of conceptual art that shows a bare-shouldered woman eating a banana in a rather suggestive fashion, after he ordered the video artwork removed from the museum on the grounds that it might “irritate sensitive young people,” according to a report by Time.com.
Museum Director Jerzy Miziolek denied that he gave in to the pressure of artists and protesters who ridiculed the decision to take down the work by Natalia Lach-Lachowicz, who goes by the name Natalia LL. Many took to Instagram and other platforms to post photos of themselves eating bananas, including another prominent Polish artist, photographer Sylwia Kowalczyk (who now resides in Scotland), who posted a banana-eating photo of herself on her own Instagram, viewable at this link.
“This should not happen to any artist, male or female,” Kowalczyk told CNN. "Natalia Lach-Lachowicz is one of the icons of the Polish contemporary art and has her place in art history already."
"For me, Natalia's works are a view on feminism, however the banana that was used in the image is also a symbol of freedom,” added photographer Justyna Piechuta—who also posted a banana selfie to Instagram. “I can't imagine in today's world someone would try to ban art just because of their views on art or sexuality."
The video was not, however, removed from the Polish museum’s website, and may be viewed by visiting this link. The museum itself, on the site, praises the Natalia LL work.
“In the 1960s and 1970s, Natalia LL was one of the first artists to step forward and criticize conceptual art for excessive rationalization and avoidance of physical sensuality,” the site says. “Combination of a ‘cold’ film recording with a ‘hot’ sensual motif stands for a rejection of the purely analytical character of conceptual art.”
The video, which was shot on 16mm film, runs about 16 minutes and has no soundtrack. In the video, the model also eats a breadstick and a hot dog, also with what the museum called “a strongly erotic edge.”
A group of protesters also gathered outside the museum on Monday to stage a live banana eat-in.
Miziolek said that he would reinstate the “Consumer Art” exhibit—but only for another week, when the museum begins a renovation project. Whether “Consumer Art” would return after the renovations are complete remained unclear.
Photo By ArteFutura YouTube Screen Capture
