Untitled (2022)

This other image represents a man, Massimo De Carlo, the Italian dealer of the artist, taped on the wall. Maurizio Cattelan wanted to create a contemporary crucifixion, and at the same time, to perform an act of revenge towards the figure—the dealer—who, according to him, was taking advantage of his imagination and work. For the opening of his show at a gallery in Milan, Maurizio Cattelan decided to ask Massimo de Carlo, his dealer and friend, to be taped on a wall.

Daddy, Daddy (2008)

Daddy, Daddy is one of the most famous works by Maurizio Cattelan. The artist was very much impressed, or shocked we could say, by the Walt Disney version of Pinocchio, one of the most famous books in Italian literature. In the cartoon movie, the puppet goes into the ocean, is swallowed by a whale, and then finds his father inside the whale. When he sees his father at the bottom of the whale’s stomach, he screams “Daddy, Daddy.” But afterwards the whale expels the puppet outside, back into the ocean, where he drowns. An image in the cartoon shows the puppet floating over the waves. Maurizio Cattelan took this image, transformed it into a sculpture, and put the puppet into a simple pool.

Himmwood 他莱坞 (2022)

In 2001, Maurizio Cattelan re-built on the hillside of Palermo, Sicily, the famous Hollywood sign. Each letter was 20 meters high, and the entire sign was more than 170 meters long. People that were visiting Palermo were for a moment disconcerted by viewing a sign that they knew was in fact in Los Angeles. Himmwood is a collage meditation about this moment, and about the idea of displacement of symbolic icons. When we take a famous icon and we displace it, the viewer also feels displaced. When we see the Eiffel Tower, or the Hollywood sign, or the Leaning Tower of Pisa, somewhere else from where it originally was, we feel disconcerted. We doubt ourselves and the place where we are.

Yes! (2019)

The light bulbs we see are self-portraits of the artist. The title is Yes! Light bulbs are a symbol of ideas in many representations, particularly in cartoons. When a character has a brilliant idea, a light bulb appears over his or her head. Maurizio Cattelan played with this kind of image and created his own idea, which is, at the same time, a light bulb.

Breath (2021)

A figure is sleeping on the floor, and next to him, a little dog. Maurizio Cattelan was inspired by a famous funeral sculpture dedicated to Ilaria del Carretto in a church in Lucca. The woman is lying in state, and at the bottom of her feet, a little dog is looking at her. In the case of Maurizio Cattelan’s sculpture, both the dog and the person are sleeping. Maybe they are dead. This a monument to devotion, peace, and silence.

Lessico Familiare (1989)

A small picture in silver frame. In Italy, families of the middle class used to consider a silver frame as a symbol of a certain social status. When you enter the house of an Italian family, you can often see a family picture framed in silver on a piece of furniture by the entrance. Cattelan’s self-portrait, with his hands making the shape of a heart, is a joke about this convention. At the same time, it reflects the origin of the artist, who comes from a lower class family in which a silver frame was just a dream.

Untitled (2008)

Two boots that remind us of Vincent van Gogh’s famous painting of his own boots covered with mud. But also, in the countryside in Italy, farmers often use boots to grow certain herbs. They use them as pots. Maurizio Cattelan took both the idea of van Gogh and the idea of the farmers, and created a new work where a person seems to grow out of the boots.

Untitled 2019)

For this untitled golden boot, Cattelan got inspiration from a 1933 Futurist sculpture by Renato Bertelli titled Continuous Profile. Cattelan put himself inside the boot and transformed a normal rubber boot into a golden trophy. So, this sculpture becomes a self-portrait as a trophy.

Nothing (2021)

We look inside of this mirror; the frame is baroque. And on top of the frame there are the famous Cattelan pigeons. It is about luxury, aristocracy, history, and, at the same time, how all these things can decay and become meaningless. The pigeons invade an empty palace with golden mirrors and golden frames, and they sit on top of them, oblivious that all these elements represent power, status, and history.

Mini-Me （1999）

A little figure is looking down at you. It is the artist himself, as Mini-Me, dressed in jeans and a sweater, sadly looking at the visitors. We don’t know if the artist wants to represent himself shrunk and depressed, or if he is joking with himself.

Untitled （2019）

Oscar is the name of the famous gold sculpture that is awarded in Hollywood. Cattelan doesn’t represent himself in gold but in plaster. The only gold thing is the gold toilet seat, from one of his most famous works, stuck over his head. It is again a self-reference to his work, but also a reference to luxury, to celebrity, to communication.

Father (2021)

Father is a mural where two huge feet become like sculptures on Easter Island. The feet are the feet of the artist. The title Father reveals his complex relationship with his own father, a father that was at the same time absent and dead while still living.
There is also another image which comes to mind when looking at Father. It’s the image of the body of Che Guevara, the guerilla leader that was killed in the jungle of Bolivia, and paraded in front of journalists after his death. His feet—bare—were the most prominent feature of his body, like in this work, by Maurizio Cattelan.

Dynamo Secession (1997)

Who are these people on bicycles pedaling without moving? Visitors, guards, professionals. And what are they doing, why are they pedaling off into the space? If you notice, the light bulbs above them go on and off according to the speed of their movement. This work was originally presented in Vienna in Austria in an exhibition where Maurizio Cattelan was one of the artists. In the basement of the Secession, a museum in Vienna, two guards were pedaling on bicycles to produce electrical energy for the lighting of the exhibition. Cattelan wants to stress the idea that what we see is always the result of human action, human fatigue, and human devotion.

Untitled (1997)

A small dog, or rather the skeleton of a small dog, is standing on the ground, with a daily newspaper in its month. Famously, certain well-trained dogs can bring the daily newspaper from the front door to their owner, still in bed. But when the owner dies the dog doesn’t know, and still brings the daily newspaper to the owner’s bed—until the dog itself dies, and becomes a skeleton.