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Artist or Maker: Cattelan, Maurizio (b. 1960)
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Provenance: Galleria Massimo Minini, Brescia.
Acquired from the above by the present owner.
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Exhibited: Brescia, Galleria Massimo Minini, Maurizio Cattelan, October-November 1997.
Pittsburgh, Carnegie Museum of Art, Hello My Name Is..., June-September 2002.
Dresden, Deutsches Hygiene Museum, The Ten Commandments, June-December 2004.
Paris, Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin, Empreinte moi, October-December 2005.
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Literature: 'New York: Cattelan among artists for Boss Prize' in Il Giornalle dell'Arte, Rome, September 2000 (illustrated).
Maurizio Cattelan, exh. cat., Dijon, Le Consortium, 1988 (original installation of 500 masks at the Galleria Massimo Minini illustrated in colour, p. 118).
F. Bonami, Maurizio Cattelan, London 2000 (original installation, illustrated in colour, pp. 102-105).
Maurizio Cattelan, exh. cat., Milan, Museo d'Arte Contemporanea, 1999 (illustrated in colour, p. 48).
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Artist's Resale Right ("droit de Suite"). If the Artist's Resale Right Regulations 2006 apply to this lot, the buyer also 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 17.5% on the buyer's premium
A proliferation of mini masks is spread across a wall, each one slightly unique yet forming part of an unquestionably homogenous whole, each one showing the wry and inscrutable features of Maurizio Cattelan, looking on with shared intent. This rare and unusually large grouping of Cattelan's Spermini, executed in 1997, questions and challenges notions on a range of subjects, from genetic engineering to the vanity of the artistic act. For what is creation, in the artistic field, if not self-propagation, self-preservation, self-celebration? In this sense, the Spermini, in their strange and almost random agglomeration on the wall, can be seen to provide a humorous yet perceptive parody of large-scale paintings such as those of the revered Abstract Expressionists like Jackson Pollock. Cattelan has stripped away a layer of pretence and has overtly created a wall that is a celebration of his own features, allowing him both to mock the culture of art world celebrity and to perpetuate it by placing such focus on his own features.
In Spermini, each head is a slight variant on the other, introducing a dialogue on the ever-slippery nature of identity. This crowd of quasi-Cattelans recalls his Super Noi, the accumulation of drawings made according to his friend's descriptions of the artist to police artists, each slightly different. Meanwhile, the sameness of these miniature masks introduces questions of uniqueness, these cloned visages forcing us to reappraise both our ideas about artworks and about the artist himself. The fact that these are not statue heads, not casts, but instead latex masks adds a strange sinister twist. For a mask is used to conceal, not to reveal, allowing Cattelan to throw into doubt the entire nature of art, of visual communication and indeed of human interaction.
The strange balance, or tension, in Spermini between earnest intent and parody, between witticism and criticism, lies at the heart of much of Cattelan's work, leading the viewer to wonder how serious he is. In Spermini, these tiny Cattelans look on with their hundred and fifty poker faces, and give away nothing.
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