Beschrijving
Tekst: Francesco Bonami e.a.
Uitvoering: Paperback
Aantal pagina’s: 212
Illustraties: Kleur en zwart-wit
Uitgever: Phaidon Press, 2003 (Phaidon Contemporary Artists Series)
Taal: Engels
Staat: Als nieuw
Maurizio Cattelan (b.1960) is today’s best-known Italian artist. In some ways an heir to the legendary Italian ‘anti-artist’ Piero Manzoni, Cattelan produces witty, unorthodox performances, sculptures and photoworks that are as varied as they are unsettling. This humorous, untraditional art often takes an off-centre standpoint at the margins of mainstream society to poke fun at art history, monumentality and nationalism.
Cattelan was once a furniture designer, which infuses all his unconventional work with a surprising elegance that is especially striking. He works in a great variety of media. Examples include a real stuffed horse hung from the magnificent ceiling of a great Italian Palazzo (Novecento, 1997) in reference to Arte Povera artist Jannis Kounellis’ exhibition of 12 real horses in Rome some thirty years before; and a ‘homeless person’ mannequin, realistically slumped on a city sidewalk, the lifeless reminder of the wasted human lives we witness daily in city streets.
References to Arte Povera, classic Italian figurative sculpture and much post-war art and culture are blended in Cattelan’s work with the artist’s own idiosyncracies. Over the years, Cattelan – working with themes that vary from thievery to escapism to childhood – has consistently produced significant artworks that have captured the attention of the international art world and established him as one of the most exciting artists working today.
