Maurizio Cattelan (Phaidon Contemporary Artists Series) - Softcover

This comprehensive monograph documents the work of Maurizio Cattelan, the best-known Italian artist to have emerged internationally in the 1990s. His work has featured in three editions of the Venice Biennale (1993; 1997; 1999) and in major venues worldwide, including The Museum of Modern Art, New York (1998); and the Tate Gallery, London (1999). Cattelan creates sculptures that mock the art system and even the artist himself, with considerable wit and audacity. Poking fun at art history (with, for example, a giant, Disneyland-type figure of Pablo Picasso greeting visitors at New York's Museum of Modern Art), monumentality (with a tomb-like, marble epitaph listing all the football matches lost by the England team, exhibited in a prominent London gallery), his native Italy (in a major exhibition celebrating new Italian art, Cattelan created a rug forming a map of his country -inevitably trampled and soiled beneath museum visitors' feet), and often makes fun of himself and his own inability to be responsible, "serious" artist. Part jester, part accuser of the contemporary art world, part thief, Cattelan also conveys a lonely desperation behind the humour and sarcasm in his unconventional works.

Francesco Bonami is Manilow Senior Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, as well as Artistic Director of the Fondazione Sandretto ReRebaudengo per l'Arte in Turin, Fondazione Pitti Discovery in Florence and the Centro di Arte Contemporanea Villa Manin. He was the director of the 50th Venice Biennale (2003) and Co-Curator of Manifesta 3 (2000). Nancy Spector is Curator of Contemporary Art at the Solomon R Guggenheim Museum, New York. Her exhibitions there have included 'Felix Gonzalez-Torres' (1995), 'Robert Rauschenberg: Performance' (1997) and 'Andreas Slominski' (1999). Spector is a regular contributor to Artforum, Parkett and Frieze. Barbara Vanderlinden (Focus) is an independent curator who founded and directs the independent exhibition space 'Roomade' in Brusssels. In 1998 she co-curatored of Manifesta 2 (Luxembourg, 1998), which included a new work by Maurizio Cattelan. Massimiliano Gioni is Curator of Fondazione Trussardi, Milan, and a founding Director of The Wrong Gallery, New York. He has co-curated such international exhibitions as Manifesta 5 (San Sebastian, 2004) and the 4th Berlin Biennial (2006).