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拍品專文
Maurizio Cattelan is the irreverent bad boy of contemporary art. He pillages, borrows, embezzles, all in the name of art, and in the cause of deflating art's pomposity. Executed in 2002, Frank and Jamie is another of this bandit's attacks on the Establishment, on the world of power and authority. Two New York policemen have been recreated in replica and propped upside-down against a wall-- 'They're like broomsticks' (Cattelan, quoted in C. Vogel, 'Don't Get Angry. He's Kidding. Seriously.', New York Times, 13 May 2002, p. E3). Is this a political satire on the role of authority in the modern world? Or is it the statement of an anti-establishment artist, deliberately sweeping the forces of authority aside? Or is it a mischievous prank? In the world of Cattelan, it is safest to assume that all and none of the above are true.
This act of subversion is so obvious as to appear almost silly-- Cattelan has all too literally turned the policemen, and therefore societal structures of authority, on their heads. He has reduced these policemen to strange, absurd, incongruous and superfluous objects that are at the periphery of the room, and of our world. He begs us not to take them seriously, a request that is made so much easier by the slightly vacant yet wholly approachable and human smile on Frank's face. Where Duane Hanson's sculptures often lead to the feeling that there is a strange presence in the room with the viewer, as though someone is looking over your shoulder, the potential of the lifesize Frank and Jamie to be eerie and disconcerting is disrupted by their absurd positioning.
Cattelan has stated that Frank and Jamie form part of a trilogy examining the nature of power. The other two segments of this trilogy are La nona ora, the 1999 installation in which a waxwork Pope has been struck by a meteorite, and Him, a child-sized model of Hitler praying. In all of this trilogy, symbols or personifications of authority are being dethroned, destabilised and disrupted. In this context, Frank and Jamie may appear to form an incongruous third aspect of this trilogy when compared to Pope John Paul II and Hitler, who are iconic characters in their own right, superficially standing for good and evil-- Frank and Jamie are not famous. But their uniform is.
When Frank and Jamie was executed in 2002, the uniform of the New York policeman had gained new associations, following the surge in patriotism and sympathy that came in the wake of the terrorist attacks of 9/11 the previous year. Like a moth to a candle, Cattelan, now a resident of New York, was clearly drawn to the subject in part by the new inviolable status that the uniform had for some people. But even then, the reputation of New York's finest was not without taint Cattelan was being disingenuous when he claimed that he was merely trying 'to do iconic cops, like in the movies. It's the right moment because it's the wrong moment. I didn't want to make a comment about New York City's police or Sept. 11th or Amadou Diallo' (Cattelan, quoted in Ibid., p. E3). This was a reference to the 1999 killing of a West African at the hands of the police in which four officers fired a total of forty-one shots at the unarmed immigrant, sparking a controversial inquiry and mass allegations of police brutality. It is this multiplicity in the associations that the figures of the policemen prompt in the minds of their viewers that lend the work its strength. Cattelan has indeed created 'iconic cops' in the classical mould, but it is the status of these waxwork dummies as stereotypes that forces us to reconsider our own assumptions about the men and women who wear that uniform. This is rammed home by their being placed upside down in an artistic context, a device perhaps inspired by the works of his compatriot Luciano Fabro. This begs us to reappraise the image of the policeman, to take nothing for granted, to go back to square one and remove all our assumptions.
The fact that Frank and Jamie occupy the wall space that is intended for art, for paintings, implies that Cattelan has also not passed up an opportunity to dethrone an authority that is less terrestrial than the police-- that of art itself. For Cattelan, the assumptions of what is and what is not art, of what is allowable and what is not, of what is good taste and what is bad, are strict rules that were made to be flagrantly disobeyed. Andy Warhol once claimed that rather than buying expensive pictures, people should just put money on their walls. Cattelan takes this a step further by implying that all art is not capitalism, but instead a form of totalitarianism. Be it in the fashions or the interpretations of art in the modern world, there are stringent guidelines that are all too often obeyed, and it is this blind obeisance that Cattelan has spotlighted in Frank and Jamie.
Later, Frank and Jamie would come to be read as mocking the art world in another sense: the effect of the physical presence of these policemen in the viewing space, and more importantly the manner in which it has been disrupted, would be used as an example in a dispute that began when Vanessa Beecroft made allegations that Cattelan had repeatedly either plagiarised or parodied her works, citing her 1990 relationship with him as his motive. This was a charge that Cattelan himself deliberately and obliquely failed to deny, adding another complex layer of potential meaning or mockery to Frank and Jamie: 'Was Warhol robbing Marilyn [Monroe's] identity when he painted her? And what was Cézanne doing? Robbing apples? In art, all you can do in the end is appropriate that which surrounds you. So it is never a robbery. At the most it is a loan. Unlike thieves, artists always give back the stolen goods' (Cattelan, quoted in J. Hooper, 'Former Lover Accuses Cattelan of Stealing Her Ideas', Guardian, 19 July 2005). Cattelan has long put this philosophy to the test, at one point even stealing an entire exhibition by another artist and displaying it as his own work. It would therefore be unsurprising to find that Frank and Jamie conveniently provided an arena in which Cattelan could mock the actions of Beecroft in which groups of people stand before the viewers. Where Beecroft usually used models, she has also used Navy SEALs in these actions, and it is to those real life action men that the tubby and upside-down Frank and Jamie provide such a concise and entertaining foil, revealing Cattelan to be an artist of immeasurable depth in his ability to cock a snook at society, the art world, his friends and former lovers and, not least, himself.
This act of subversion is so obvious as to appear almost silly-- Cattelan has all too literally turned the policemen, and therefore societal structures of authority, on their heads. He has reduced these policemen to strange, absurd, incongruous and superfluous objects that are at the periphery of the room, and of our world. He begs us not to take them seriously, a request that is made so much easier by the slightly vacant yet wholly approachable and human smile on Frank's face. Where Duane Hanson's sculptures often lead to the feeling that there is a strange presence in the room with the viewer, as though someone is looking over your shoulder, the potential of the lifesize Frank and Jamie to be eerie and disconcerting is disrupted by their absurd positioning.
Cattelan has stated that Frank and Jamie form part of a trilogy examining the nature of power. The other two segments of this trilogy are La nona ora, the 1999 installation in which a waxwork Pope has been struck by a meteorite, and Him, a child-sized model of Hitler praying. In all of this trilogy, symbols or personifications of authority are being dethroned, destabilised and disrupted. In this context, Frank and Jamie may appear to form an incongruous third aspect of this trilogy when compared to Pope John Paul II and Hitler, who are iconic characters in their own right, superficially standing for good and evil-- Frank and Jamie are not famous. But their uniform is.
When Frank and Jamie was executed in 2002, the uniform of the New York policeman had gained new associations, following the surge in patriotism and sympathy that came in the wake of the terrorist attacks of 9/11 the previous year. Like a moth to a candle, Cattelan, now a resident of New York, was clearly drawn to the subject in part by the new inviolable status that the uniform had for some people. But even then, the reputation of New York's finest was not without taint Cattelan was being disingenuous when he claimed that he was merely trying 'to do iconic cops, like in the movies. It's the right moment because it's the wrong moment. I didn't want to make a comment about New York City's police or Sept. 11th or Amadou Diallo' (Cattelan, quoted in Ibid., p. E3). This was a reference to the 1999 killing of a West African at the hands of the police in which four officers fired a total of forty-one shots at the unarmed immigrant, sparking a controversial inquiry and mass allegations of police brutality. It is this multiplicity in the associations that the figures of the policemen prompt in the minds of their viewers that lend the work its strength. Cattelan has indeed created 'iconic cops' in the classical mould, but it is the status of these waxwork dummies as stereotypes that forces us to reconsider our own assumptions about the men and women who wear that uniform. This is rammed home by their being placed upside down in an artistic context, a device perhaps inspired by the works of his compatriot Luciano Fabro. This begs us to reappraise the image of the policeman, to take nothing for granted, to go back to square one and remove all our assumptions.
The fact that Frank and Jamie occupy the wall space that is intended for art, for paintings, implies that Cattelan has also not passed up an opportunity to dethrone an authority that is less terrestrial than the police-- that of art itself. For Cattelan, the assumptions of what is and what is not art, of what is allowable and what is not, of what is good taste and what is bad, are strict rules that were made to be flagrantly disobeyed. Andy Warhol once claimed that rather than buying expensive pictures, people should just put money on their walls. Cattelan takes this a step further by implying that all art is not capitalism, but instead a form of totalitarianism. Be it in the fashions or the interpretations of art in the modern world, there are stringent guidelines that are all too often obeyed, and it is this blind obeisance that Cattelan has spotlighted in Frank and Jamie.
Later, Frank and Jamie would come to be read as mocking the art world in another sense: the effect of the physical presence of these policemen in the viewing space, and more importantly the manner in which it has been disrupted, would be used as an example in a dispute that began when Vanessa Beecroft made allegations that Cattelan had repeatedly either plagiarised or parodied her works, citing her 1990 relationship with him as his motive. This was a charge that Cattelan himself deliberately and obliquely failed to deny, adding another complex layer of potential meaning or mockery to Frank and Jamie: 'Was Warhol robbing Marilyn [Monroe's] identity when he painted her? And what was Cézanne doing? Robbing apples? In art, all you can do in the end is appropriate that which surrounds you. So it is never a robbery. At the most it is a loan. Unlike thieves, artists always give back the stolen goods' (Cattelan, quoted in J. Hooper, 'Former Lover Accuses Cattelan of Stealing Her Ideas', Guardian, 19 July 2005). Cattelan has long put this philosophy to the test, at one point even stealing an entire exhibition by another artist and displaying it as his own work. It would therefore be unsurprising to find that Frank and Jamie conveniently provided an arena in which Cattelan could mock the actions of Beecroft in which groups of people stand before the viewers. Where Beecroft usually used models, she has also used Navy SEALs in these actions, and it is to those real life action men that the tubby and upside-down Frank and Jamie provide such a concise and entertaining foil, revealing Cattelan to be an artist of immeasurable depth in his ability to cock a snook at society, the art world, his friends and former lovers and, not least, himself.