Maurizio Cattelan

Maurizio Cattelan has been called many names, but do not call him an imposter – “an impostor is someone who wants to be someone else… I am who I’ve always been.” Maurizio, the troublemaker, grew up in an industrial town in northern Italy, faking his parents’ signatures on school report cards. Maurizio, the outsider,  received no formal art training but has been hailed ‘the most famous Italian artist since Caravaggio.’ Maurizio, the heretic who dropped a meteorite on the pope (La Nona Ora, 1999), holds no institution sacred – not even the art world. A century after Duchamp’s Fountain (1917), Maurizio inverted the idea of readymade art with America (2016) – a fully-functional solid gold toilet in the restrooms at Guggenheim Museum.

While Comedian (2019) – an ordinary banana duct-taped to a wall – has captured mainstream attention for years, it’s not the first time it seemed like Maurizio was playing a joke on the world. For example, L.O.V.E (2010), an 11m marble hand with four digits missing – leaving only a middle finger outside the Italian Stock Exchange in Milan. Is it a response to the fascist history of the square, or the 2008 financial crisis? Is it a postmodern comment on the emptiness of gestures, or just a really good joke? Any single answer would be unsatisfactory. To Maurizio, “if something can be reduced to one clear concept, it is as sure as hell artistically dead.” Only one thing unifies this sprawling, sardonic oeuvre – the figure of Maurizio the Artist. Or is that just another Mini-Me (1999)?