Maurizio Cattelan was born in Padua, Italy in 1960. Internationally, he is considered as the most relevant Italian artist in the contemporary art world. As a self-taught artist, his career began in 1989 with a black and white photograph titled Family Syntax, a framed self-portrait in which he appears forming a heart with his hands over his naked chest. He had previously collaborated with a gallery in Milan working on furniture design.
Elena Cué: Your work is anarchic, irreverent, absurd insolent and provocative to an extreme. It is the stage representation of satire. One could say he is a post-Dada who questions all established values; religious authority, our society, materialism and contemporary art itself. His attitude towards established authority, and thus towards its political and religious representatives comes from his school days. His work is cast as a comic scene for the viewer so that each individual may develop his or her own reflection and interpretation of what they are seeing.
Do you approach your own existence with the same sense of humor?
M.C: I think humor and irony include tragedy in itself, as if they were two sides of the same coin. In both cases, laughter is a Trojan horse to enter into direct contact with the unconscious, strike the imagination and trigger visceral reactions. If humor of certain works was enough to pull of anger, fear and amazement out of everyone, the psychoanalysts would be in disgrace … shame is not enough.
E.C: It is difficult to define a profile of Maurizio Catellan. How would you define yourself?
M.C: I think that the world needs to find a provocateur or a scapegoat, from time to time. I just found myself in an odd place in a fancy moment. No matter what they say, I still think to be the most boring person I know…. I would fall asleep trying to define myself!
1997 maurizio cattelan novecento 1997 photo paolo pellion di persano
E.C: Art is a kind of thought. The artistic work is an extension of what latently lies within the artist’s subconscious. This pure kind of thought, dark and impossible to decipher, becomes very symbolic if it reaches the surface through the creative process.
Has art helped you know yourself better? What do you get from it?
M. C: You should ask it my psychoanalyst, if only I had one. Probably I never needed one because my job was a kind of therapy: every work I made was a part of me I got rid of while creating it. Happiness is not about gaining something, it’s more about getting rid of the darkness you accumulate. Apparently, since I retired the treatment is over: I’m not sure it worked, but in the meanwhile I produced a lot of crap!
E.C: You’ve said you don’t consider yourself a conceptual artist, that you don’t think.
Is that another joke?
M.C: I feel I’ve never started being an artist, maybe that’s why it was so easy to decide to retire…I constantly question myself and everything I do, this helped not to take myself too seriously. And I’m not very fond of categories, I find words are terribly dangerous, as they seems to be as definitive as tombstones. This could maybe explain why my works are always “untitled”: it is like writing a joke on my own grave.
E.C: Definiendo la obra de arte por dos criterios fundamentales: significado y materialización, y un tercero, la interpretación que cada espectador aporta a la obra (Arthur C. Danto). Y dado que la materialización de sus obras corre a cargo de otros, en este caso a cargo de Daniel Druet, maestro en modelado artesanal que ha fabricado muchas de sus figuras como han sido el Papa Juan Pablo II, Hitler, la modelo Stephanie Seymour o Kennedy.
¿Qué importancia tienen para usted el significado y la posterior interpretación?
M.C: Nunca me he planteado la cuestión de esta forma. Yo simplemente busqué imágenes que, dentro del desbordante río de información que nos abruma a diario, removieran una reacción instintiva y visceral. Volviendo al tema del humor, creo que puede ser una muy buena manera
E.C: Meaning and materialization are two fundamental criteria to define a work of art, the subsequent interpretation that each spectator brings to the work can be added as a third criteria (Arthur C. Danto). Given that the materialization of your work is carried out by others, in this case by Daniel Druet, a master in artisan modeling who has created many figures such as Pope John Paul II, Hitler, model Stephanie Seymour and Kennedy.
What importance do you give to the meaning and subsequent interpretation of the viewers of your art?
M.C: I never asked myself the question in this way, I just searched for images that, in the flood of useless information from which we are overwhelmed everyday, would stir an instictive reaction, from the stomach. Returning to the issue of humor, I think it can be a great way to bring to the surface anger, but without violence. Since the first moment of conception my sculptures were born as images and in that form they continue living in the media. As long as it is a powerful image at first glance, it’ll work.
E.C: Your fondness for using images of iconic personalities has a huge power of communication. Pope John Paul II dying with a suffering expression after being struck by a meteorite in Nona Hora. The image of John Kennedy lying in a coffin with his bare feet in Now. Or Hitler in a smaller than natural size, kneeling in prayer in Him are, for better or worse, all examples of demystification to which you submit personalities who have been political or religious icons for masses of people. You appropriate their power and use it as a weapon at the service of your will.
What do you look for with such provocation and potential irritation that may result in a large segment …read more
A Conversation With Maurizio Cattelan
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