View of the installation 'Blind', 2021, by Maurizio Cattelan.Agostino Osio
The secret that Marcel Duchamp has been the center of the alternative canon of art for almost a century lies in his ideological freedom, his lack of transcendence. He never aired his political ideas but he did know how to transmute them in each of his works, which he represented universally accessible despite the theoretical burden that many put on him. He had no school, indeed, it was against all of them, unearthing for art the teachings of the great philosophers of freedom, those disciples of Socrates called "dog-men" (in addition to the best known, Diogenes, there was a woman, Hyparchia) that they locked themselves in a gymnasium on the outskirts of Athens, the Cinosargo, to ardently practice autarky and shamelessness. Cynics, with all their long lineage, are a panoply of metaphors. If we look for a meaning that defies the clichés,then we should start to study puzzling, absurd issues, such as whether the fleas of the dog jump higher than the cat's or the effect of music
country
in suicide.
When we try to isolate cynical art from reality, it is most likely that we see ourselves as moralists, monsters of slander and suspicion sweeping our writings with statements such as “they existed and they made fun of us”, a conclusion that has expired. and yet adequately staged in the new fashionable sanctuary of art, the Bourse de commerce in Paris, home of the Pinault Collection, that cosmological void into which the curious have been thrown when we thought we had already seen it all. The flawless and narcissistic rotunda designed by Tadao Ando sees itself as a work of art. It does not feel anything, at the same time that it does not allow us to see it in a middle ground. It is apocalyptic, its exaltation is a torment. It is directed populistly but aristocratically against Duchamp's faction of scholars,never against Duchamp himself. However, what matters the least is what the works of its artists mean, all eminently heterodox, with their ideal objects of desire turned off forever.
The sculptural antics of Maurizio Cattelan
The most amazing thing about this collection is that today it provides the perfect context and setting (the building housed the old bag of wheat,
le pain quotidien
) in which the art itself is better explained than any neo-Marxist would (Haacke? , Hirschhorn?), Even the infallible Marcel Broodthaers.
The blaze with which the French welcomed the collection of the Parisian plutocrat destroyed all context, at the same time that it opened the possibility of accepting a primal ruin, as if the entire "world of art" could finally say, "up to here we have fallen,
adieu
to the past and all ideology, now everyone is free to read and understand what this means ”.
Among the Pinault artists —David Hammons, Urs Fischer, Bertrand Lavier, Louise Lawler, Marlene Dumas, Kippenberger, Prince, Sherman… - is, of course, Maurizio Cattelan (Padua, 60 years old), “the most famous Italian artist in the world. world ”, a birlibirloque genius who has reawakened our interest in art and all the vulgarity of its merchants. We observe his stuffed pigeons, which have been emigrating since Germano Celant's Venice Biennale (
Tourists
, 1997), there on the balconies of the Bourse de Commerce with an intimidating slant similar to that of his most applauded “ornament”: a hand with four fingers cut that makes an obscene gesture, (
LOVE
., 2010) on a pedestal in front of the Palazzo Mezzanotte, headquarters of the (other) Milan Stock Exchange. Cattelan's impudence consists in representing the fecundity of aesthetic nihilism as if it were a sentence from Nietzsche: “Cynicism is the highest that can be reached on Earth. To conquer it, you need the boldest fists and the most delicate fingers ”(
Ecce homo
).
Cattelan knocked down Pope Wojtyla by placing a meteorite right where the robe lost its name (
La Nona Ora
, 1999); turned Hitler into a kneeling brat (
Him
, 2001, sold for 15 million euros); in
Perfect Day
(1999) he
taped
dealer
Massimo de Carlo to a gallery wall; at the Art Basel Miami 2019 fair he sold a banana (
Comedian)
for $ 120,000 - which the artist David Datuna gobbled up (
Hungry Artist
, 2019) -; lined a gold toilet (
America,
2016) and the Guggenheim offered it to Donald Trump to decorate the White House; and even set Mark Zuckerberg's year of death (* 1984- † 2025) on a tombstone. And as if the world were never enough, in 2018 Cattelan was the beneficiary of what seemed like another provocation, this time of Art with capital letters: honorary professor of sculpture at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Carrara. All our admiration.
Now, Hangar Bicocca, Pirelli's artistic headquarters in Milan, dedicates an exhibition to him, curated by Roberta Tenconi, where the artist once again pays tribute to animals, especially dogs and pigeons. It places them in a drama in three acts (with the impeccable lighting of Pasquali Mari) that represent the three phases of life:
Breath
, a sculpture made with Carrara marble where we see a dog and a man lying on the ground, facing each other. in fetal position;
Ghosts
, thousands of stuffed pigeons perched like vigilant ghosts on the railings and beams of the hangar; and the most monumental,
Blind
, a black monolith crossed by an airplane. In each work, the question for the artist is not their meaning, no matter how obvious, but what they provoke.
Cattelan knows how good this job is, but she will not continue down this path.
Breath Ghosts Blind
.
Pirelli Hangar Bicocca.
Milan.
From July 15 to February 26.
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