As an artist, Maurizio Cattelan works with universal topics. He is a past master of ambiguity and tease, knowing how to create debate-generating works that are impossible to forget once they’ve struck your retina or entered the media maelstrom. Often his approach is to borrow or steal images and narratives and even art works made by others, and then put them back into cultural circulation so that they home in on their targets with precision.
A very true-to-life wax replica of Pope John Paul II is pinned to the floor, surrounded by shards of broken glass from a skylight (La Nona Hora, 1999). Is this the result of unpredictable natural forces, striking at random, or divine intervention? In the first instance, it is a case of Cattelan himself casting the first stone in a reaction against the church as institution and authority (the title La Nona Hora – the ninth hour – refers to the time at which the crucified Christ cries out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” and underscores the mordant tone of Cattelan’s work.)
A kneeling Adolf Hitler with his hands folded in prayer is scaled down to the size of a ten-year-old boy (Him, 2001). He stands alone in a vast exhibition space, looking utterly vulnerable and innocent. Besides sparking conflicting feelings, the piece raises the question of forgiveness, in relation both to the historical figure and the artist who so blithely thrusts the quintessence of evil and demagoguery into our visual field. Art may not be able to change the world but it can do its bit to ensure that certain issues are discussed.
The work ‘Untitled’, (1998) at MoMA new York, consisted of an actor wearing an over-sized Styrofoam head of Pablo Picasso, who ranged about the foyer of one of the world’s biggest museums of modern art, greeting visitors. A teasing provocation of visitor expectations while nicely capturing Picasso as the archetypal career-conscious artist with a genius for creating art and for controlling his own public image. An underscoring of the need for the artist to be the performer of his own caricatured persona.
(PKE)
Maurizio Cattelan, born 1960, Padova, Italien.