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Artist or Maker: Maurizio Cattelan (b. 1960)
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Provenance: Galleria Massimo De Carlo, Milan.
Acquired from the above by the present owner in 1996.
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Exhibited: Aosta, Museo Archeologico Regionale, L'arte del gioco. Da Klee a Boetti, December 2002-May 2003.
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Literature: Exh. cat., La Biennale di Venezia, 49. Esposizione internazionale d'arte, Venice, 1998 (illustrated).
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Notes: THE PROPERTY OF AN ITALIAN COLLECTOR
With their huge goggle-eyes, the stuffed hares in Cattelan's Riccardo Cuor di Leone evoke a vast discordant range of emotions. Are they the trance-like eyes of the rabbit in the headlights, are they the fierce eyes of a lion, are they the wide eyes of enlightenment? Is this some strange product of genetic manipulation? Certainly the title, as well as hinting at the mock-valour of these creatures by taking the name of the English warrior-king Richard Lionheart, indicates that the eyes may not be the hares' only incongruous body...
In Riccardo Cuor di Leone, the identical appearance of the hares speaks not only of genetic manipulation, but also at cloning. In this way, as in Another Fucking Readymade, Cattelan introduces questions of mimesis and even of originality, yet the appearance of the final result, however cobbled together from the products of real life, is marked by an originality that can only be Cattelan's. The final effect is like a dark, alternative version of Watership Down. The sweetness of large cartoon eyes is implied, yet somehow these yellow orbs fail quite to be sweet.
A further disruption of the potential sweetness of these hares is, of course, the fact that they are taxidermied: Cattelan is insisting that we acknowledge the fact that these are not cuddly toys, but instead dead animals. The jarring, almost paradoxical balance between big-eyed sweetness and memento mori ensures that these hares rank alongside Cattelan's other stuffed animals in being, 'about loss, about absence, about death' (Maurizio Cattelan, quoted in N. Spector, 'Interview', in Maurizio Cattelan, London, 2000, p. 26). But, as ever, Cattelan's more serious and sobering intentions in introducing the theme of death, even by placing the viewer in direct contact with it, is off-set by his infectious, albeit twisted, sense of humour. These baffled chimeras prompt reflections on serious matters, but not without a certain amount of affection and even a guilty laugh.
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