Maurizio Cattelan (b. 1960)

Maurizio Cattelan has long been seen as a non-conformist of the contemporary art world. In Untitled, we are presented with a humourous work that was born out of Projects 65: Maurizio Cattelan, an exhibition that was at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 2011. For the exhibition, Cattelan equipped actors Judy Elkan and David Cote with an oversized papier-mâché head of Picasso accompanied with a trademark striped shirt. As Cattelan never fabricates any aspect of his work the head was constructed by a Milanese sculptor realised by cartoonist Umberto Manfrin. With no specific rules except that they had to perform mute the masquerading clone was able to run free in and out of the confines of MoMA. Initially required to meet and greet guests, Picasso's alter ego soon trans-morphed into a disobedient scamp who reverted to pan-handling and obscene gesticulation manifesting Cattelan's roguish implications.
For Cattelan's recent retrospective at the Guggenheim in New York, another edition of the current lot was exhibited amongst his most iconic works. In Untitled , the viewer is presented with Cattelan's manifestation of Picasso posing in front of a displayed Roy Lichtenstein interior painting that is part of MoMA's permanent collection. The performance has been understood as making a mockery of MoMA in being an institutionalised artistic commodity playing upon the aspects of theme parks with Picasso portraying the ever faithful mascot. As curator Laura Hoptman points out in the essay accompanying the exhibition, 'There's an uncynical jolliness that the artist may not have intended, in a funny way, if it continues to be this well-received, it's a failure -- if Maurizio's work is about getting under the museum's skin. The piece is not that simple, it's complicit with the museum, we asked him to do this, we're paying him.', (L. Hoptman quoted from https://www.artnet.com/magazine_pre2000/reviews/fusselman/fusselman12-4- 98.asp).