toward the ground, gravity forcing its body into a graceful and mournful arch, as if the weight of modern history is bending it ever downward. The title’s reference to the twentieth century is, in typical Cattelan fashion, multivalent. In addition to invoking a century of modernist experiment, technological advancement, and untold violence, it alludes also to the 1976 film of that name by Bernardo Bertolucci, which examines class struggle and the rise of Fascism in Italy.56 It could also refer to the proto-Fascist art movement Novecento Italiano, which emerged in 1922 in response to a postwar, pan-European “call to order” that rejected the formal and intellectual inventions of the artistic avant-garde. A monument to entropy, the destructive power of irresistible forces, Novecento is considered by Cattelan to be his first true sculpture in the “classic sense”: “It was the first work,” he has explained, “to measure itself against the classics.” Its physical form embodies the ancient tradition of equestrian sculpture, which depicts horses in commemorative tableaux. Cattelan cites as forerunner Donatello’s magnificent 1453 statue of the Venetian general Gattamelata (Erasmo da Narni) on horseback, which stands in Padua on the piazza in front of the Basilica di Sant’Antonio—the very church where he lost a job after drawing moustaches on the little souvenir Saint Anthonys. The Gattamelata was the first life-size equestrian bronze cast since antiquity, inspired by the sculpture of Marcus Aurelius at the Capitoline Hill in Rome. For Cattelan, Novecento marked an important turning point in his art. As a self-contained, highly resonant object that vibrates optically like any arresting image, the work no longer embodies a set of performative actions that precede it. That is not to say that the artist entirely abandoned his predilection for creating forensic scenarios. But as a strategy for art making, this new “classical” sculpture offered another aesthetic language for Cattelan, who described this move to a “new type of medium . . . [as] an important passage, a devastating, important passage.”
fig. 16 Novecento, 1997
NOTES
40 Cattelan, “Interview with Emanuela De Cecco and Roberto Pinto (extract), 1994” in Maurizio Cattelan (2003), p. 120. Originally published as “Incursioni” in Flash Art (Italian edition) 27, no. 182 (March 1994), pp. 116–18. Translated by Shaun Whiteside, 1999.
41 “Nancy Spector in Conversation with Maurizio Cattelan,” p. 17.
42 Though not created in direct reference to the Red Brigades—the V shape is in fact also a peace sign—the photograph has come to symbolize the terrorist organization in Cattelan’s work, having been cited in this context by numerous authors. The image was originally made as the invitation to an exhibition at Ars Futura Galerie in Zurich in 1996 in which Cattelan reconstructed the room in which the Swiss-based Order of the Solar Temple sect committed one of its mass suicides in 1994, with the addition of a disco dancer. Little known in the artist’s oeuvre, this perverse evocation of the Solar Temple cult is illustrated in the catalogue accompanying his show at Kunsthalle Basel in 1999. For a description of the project, see Madeleine Schuppli, “It happened in broad daylight,” in Maurizio Cattelan (1999), unpaginated. The illustration appears as that book’s Figure 8.
43 During a visit to Sicily in May 1993, Pope John Paul II urged Roman Catholics, who make up the great majority of Sicily’s population, to rise up against the Mafia. This address no doubt contributed to the ire behind the attacks, which targeted two Italian churches, San Giovanni in Laterano and San Giorgio in Velabro. In addition to the attacks on these sites and the two museums, a bomb exploded near the home of a television talk-show host, Maurizio Costanzo, a vocal Mafia opponent.
44 “Nancy Spector in Conversation with Maurizio Cattelan,” pp. 17–18.
45 Ibid., p 18.
46 The context of games specifically invokes a German board game introduced in 1936 in Dresden called Juden Raus, the object of which was to deport as many Jews as possible to Palestine.
47 In his interview with this author for the Phaidon monograph, Cattelan described eating a drug-laced cake during a visit to Amsterdam, claiming, “The experience was so surreal and intense that I thought afterwards, ‘Yes, this is what I want to do for the Sonsbeek exhibition.’ I wanted to alter people’s perception of the city in this total, all-encompassing way.” See “Nancy Spector in Conversation with Maurizio Cattelan,” p. 16.
48 According to Cattelan, L.O.V.E. is an acronym for “love, hate, vendetta, eternity” in Italian. Its Milan audience simply refers to it as il dito, or “the finger.” See Christina Passariello, “At Milan’s Bourse, Finger Pointing Has Business Leaders Up in Arms,” Wall Street Journal, May 13, 2011, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704681904576317781140034982.html.
49 In describing the piece, Cattelan referred to the gesture’s origins in France during the Battle of Agincourt in 1415 when French soldiers threatened to cut off the middle and index fingers of captured English bowmen in order to render them incapable of shooting their arrows. But when the French failed to take any prisoners, the English waved their fingers in defiance. Historical evidence suggests, however, that the origin of the raised middle finger dates back to ancient Greece and was adopted by the ancient Romans, who called it the digitus impudicus. For detailed historical examples, see Ira P. Robbins, “Digitus Impudicus: The Middle Finger and the Law,” UC Davis Law Review 41 (2008), pp. 1413–17.
50 “Nancy Spector in Conversation with Maurizio Cattelan,” p. 12.
51 Cattelan arranged for the showing of L.O.V.E. in conjunction with an exhibition of his work at the Palazzo Reale in Milan (September 25–October 24, 2010); in fact, he agreed to the show on the condition that his outdoor piece would be realized. At first, after the expected red tape, the mayor of Milan, Letizia Moratti, agreed to exhibit the sculpture only during Fashion Week, presumably to deflate its potential for controversy, but once installed and embraced by the Milanese public, she extended its display until the end of the year. At the time of this writing (April 2011), it is still standing.
52 The piece was destroyed only one day after its unveiling by Franco de Benetetto, a forty-two-year-old Italian construction worker. Approximately six months later, a similar piece by the artist comprising a child hanging from one of three flagpoles (cat. no. 95) was nearly removed from the first International Biennial of Contemporary Art of Seville when the local government complained that it might frighten children. The exhibition’s curator, Harald Szeemann, refused, and the president of the biennial, Juana de Aizpuru, said the work denounced children’s suffering around the world. “How can society be so hypocritical,” she asked, “that it is surprised by a doll hanging from a pole, when every day we see horrible pictures of children dying of hunger or war?’’ See Dale Fuchs, “Arts, Briefly; Hanging Offense,” New York Times, October 8, 2004, http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D0CE2DB153BF93BA35753C1A9629C8B63&scp=13&sq=maurizio+cattelan&st=nyt.
