Maurizio Cattelan - Phaidon 2005

Maurizio Cattelan is one of the best-known Italian artists to have emerged internationally in the 1990s. In the spirit of Piero Manzoni, the legendary Italian *anti-artist' of the 1960s, Cattelan produces witty, unorthodox sculptures, performances and photoworks which are as varied as they are unnerving. He creates works that mock the art system and even the artist himself. On some occasions, Cattelan pokes fun at art history - with, for example, a performer wearing a giant, Disneyland-style Pablo Picasso mask, greeting visitors at New York's Museum of Modern Art in 1998 - or monumentality - with a huge, tomb-like granite plaque listing World Cup football matches lost by England, displayed in the window of a prominent London gallery in 1999. Often Cattelan stages a persistent desire to escape the pressures of being an artist - by knotting sheets to climb out of a museum's window before an exhibition opening. Part jester, part accuser of the art system, part thief, Cattelan also conveys a lonely desperation behind his work's humour and sarcasm, as this tiny book testifies. 

212p - EN - 13.8x15.6cm - softcover in dust-jacket - perfect condition