Maurizio Cattelan

Works and bio

Interview with the artist

Images

By re-presenting a safe which has been broken into as a sculptural work of art, Maurizio Cattelan has taken the idea of the ‘Readymade’ one stage further, by cleverly highlighting the criminal nature of this activity as outright theft.

Cattelan, 40, may be one of the world’s most talked about modern artists right now, but he’s not the most articulate. In fact, he would be happy to leave Massimiliano Gioni, art director with his Milan sponsors, the Trussardi Foundation, to talk for him. Currently, Cattelan is recovering from an attack of “art rage”: a Milanese man was so incensed by his “installation” of three children hanging by their necks, eyes open, from a tree that he cut them down. It is not clear whether this was a triumph for Cattelan or a tragedy. He is not suing the attacker but Milan authorities are busy determining whether the installation was really a work of art, in which case the saboteur would face charges.

Best known for his facetious art productions, which are as surprising as they are unsettling, Maurizio Cattelan is the ultimate sideliner artist, poking holes in art, art history, monumentality, and nationalism. Take, for instance, Daddy Daddy (2008), the sculpture that Cattelan exhibited last winter at the Guggenheim in New York. A life-size, 3-D version of Disney’s Pinocchio floats face down in the museum’s rotunda pool and, in one gesture, seems to mock the forced optimism of the art world and the authoritative status of the museum…