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Lot Essay
Over the past fifteen years, Maurizio Cattelan has made an international name for himself as contemporary art's jester par excellence, with a practice notable for its blend of surprise and subversion, comedy and tragedy. In 1998, he hired an actor to don an oversized papier-mache head of Pablo Picasso and solicit spare change from people on their way to the Museum of Modern Art, New York; he let his space at the 1993 Venice Biennale to a perfume company to use for their advertisements; his best-known sculptures include a horse suspended from the ceiling and a life-size figure of Pope John Paul II being felled by a meteorite.
This large photograph documents a moment of Cattelan's 1999 installation at the Venice Biennale, a project that was on view only for the few days that the press attended the art fair, in advance of its public opening. The work involved the interring in sand of an Indian fakir hired by Cattelan, three times a day for three hours at a time. Only his hands, peaked in prayer or supplication, remained aboveground.
Or so Cattelan said. Many insiders subsequently claimed that the raffish Italian artist had neither employed nor buried a meditating swami, but instead placed a lifelike sculpture of painted plaster hands on the mound of sand and spun the accompanying fantastic tale. Cattelan's ambiguous, unresolved gesture caused a sensation even at an event known for its spectacular quality.
Despite the stir caused by Mother, this photograph lacks any trace of the ballyhoo surrounding the installation. The image testifies only to patience, human endurance, and perhaps even faith. Yet as is often the case with Cattelan's work, our knowledge of the circumstances surrounding its production imbue it with irreverence, derring-do, and a distinctly contemporary wit that is at once charmed and charming. As straightforward as the image appears, the truth behind it remains unresolved, its true story unknown.
This large photograph documents a moment of Cattelan's 1999 installation at the Venice Biennale, a project that was on view only for the few days that the press attended the art fair, in advance of its public opening. The work involved the interring in sand of an Indian fakir hired by Cattelan, three times a day for three hours at a time. Only his hands, peaked in prayer or supplication, remained aboveground.
Or so Cattelan said. Many insiders subsequently claimed that the raffish Italian artist had neither employed nor buried a meditating swami, but instead placed a lifelike sculpture of painted plaster hands on the mound of sand and spun the accompanying fantastic tale. Cattelan's ambiguous, unresolved gesture caused a sensation even at an event known for its spectacular quality.
Despite the stir caused by Mother, this photograph lacks any trace of the ballyhoo surrounding the installation. The image testifies only to patience, human endurance, and perhaps even faith. Yet as is often the case with Cattelan's work, our knowledge of the circumstances surrounding its production imbue it with irreverence, derring-do, and a distinctly contemporary wit that is at once charmed and charming. As straightforward as the image appears, the truth behind it remains unresolved, its true story unknown.