Maurizio Cattelan

If asked - is t still possible to provoke in contemporary art? -, one valid answer could be: Maurizio Cattelan. The Italian artist, in some fifteen years of activity (he was born in Padova in 1960), succeeded in shocking a rather large array of observers, from the Church to the police, from animal defenders to exhibition organisers. This little monographic work, in a new collection directed by Francesco Bonami, who was the commissioner to the Biennale of Venice in 2005, lists his main feat of arms. The most known are undoubtedly La nona ora (the Ninth Hour), where pope John-Paul II is killed by a meteorite, or Him, where Hitler, not named, prays on his knees. These are all ax models that greatly resemble the characters. Closer to the world of performance is Another Fucking Ready-Made (1996): the artist exposed in a foundation in Amsterdam the objects he had just robbed from another gallery. Peace had to be reached with the police… In making fun of the media mechanisms that lead to fame, Cattelan also sold his space at the Biennale of Venice (1993) to an advertiser and created the Oblomov foundation. His aim was to give money to artists who commit to create nothing…

• Maurizio Cattelan, by Francesco Manacorda, Hypercontemporain collection, Hazan publishing house, 2007, ISBN : 978-2-7541-0212-4, 108 p., 1