Maurizio Cattelan (b. 1960)
Artist's Resale Right ("Droit de Suite"). Artist's… Read more PROPERTY FROM THE COLLECTION OF MTV NETWORKS
Maurizio Cattelan (b. 1960)

Untitled

Details
Maurizio Cattelan (b. 1960)
Untitled
chromogenic print face-mounted on Plexiglas
70 5/8 x 87 7/8in. (179.4 x 223.4cm.)
Executed in 1998, this work is number four from an edition of ten
Provenance
Marian Goodman Gallery, New York.
Acquired from the above by the present owner.
Literature
Maurizio Cattelan, exh. cat., Basel, Kunsthalle Basel, 1999 (another from the edition illustrated, on the front cover).
G. Verzotti, Maurizio Cattelan, Milan 1999 (another from the edition illustrated in colour, p. 23).
F. Bonami, N. Spector & B. Vanderlinden, Maurizio Cattelan, London 2000 (another from the edition illustrated, p. 133).
Maurizio Cattelan: All, exh. cat., New York, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 2011-2012, no. 27 (another from the edition illustrated in colour, p. 87).
Special notice
Artist's Resale Right ("Droit de Suite"). Artist's Resale Right Regulations 2006 apply to this lot, the buyer agrees to pay us an amount equal to the resale royalty provided for in those Regulations, and we undertake to the buyer to pay such amount to the artist's collection agent. VAT rate of 5% is payable on hammer price and at 20% on the buyer's premium.

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Lot Essay

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).

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