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Maurizio Cattelan

Maurizio Cattelan
Library Shelf Location 18.CATT
Publication Date 2003
Description This comprehensive monograph documents the work of Maurizio Cattelan, the best-known Italian artist to have emerged internationally in the 1990s. His work has featured in three editions of the Venice Biennale (1993; 1997; 1999) and in major venues worldwide, including The Museum of Modern Art, New York (1998); and the Tate Gallery, London (1999). Cattelan creates sculptures that mock the art system and even the artist himself, with considerable wit and audacity. Poking fun at art history (with, for example, a giant, Disneyland-type figure of Pablo Picasso greeting visitors at New York's Museum of Modern Art), monumentality (with a tomb-like marble epitaph listing all the football matches lost by the England team, exhibited in a prominent London gallery), his native Italy (in a major exhibition celebrating new Italian art, Cattelan created a rug forming a map of his country - inevitably trampled and soiled beneath museum visitors' feet), and often makes fun of himself and his own inability to be a responsible, "serious" artist. Part jester, part accuser of the contemporary art world, part thief, Cattelan also conveys a lonely desperation behind the humour and sarcasm in his unconventional works.
ISBN 0714843067
Quantity 1
Pages 212
Authors Barbara Vanderlinden, Francesco Bonami, Nancy Spector
Format Paperback
Publisher Phaidon Press Ltd, London
Related Artist Maurizio Cattelan
Categories Photography, Sculpture, Live Art/Performance, Artist (relating to a single artist/collaborative team)
Keyword Humour
Artist's Nationality Italian
Language English

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