The Art World's Prankster: Maurizio Cattelan imagine...

This programme contains some strong language

In 2011, when the artist Maurizio Cattelan announced his retirement,

not everyone believed him.

As he returns with his biggest ever European show,

here at the Monnaie de Paris, it turns out those sceptics were right.

Maurizio Cattelan is one of the art scene's most slippery characters.

Throughout an astonishingly successful career, he's stolen,

shocked and tricked his way into becoming one

of the most controversial and provocative artists around.

In 1999, he scandalised the art world

by striking down Pope John Paul II with a meteorite.

While earlier this year,

a collector paid over 17 million at auction...for this.

Cattelan's even been known to steal another artist's work

and pass it off as his own.

But who is the elusive Maurizio Cattelan?

Is he a brilliant provocateur subverting the toxic art market

at its own game or an opportunistic fraud?

In tonight's Imagine, the film-maker Maura Axelrod tries to pin down

the truth.

Maurizio Cattelan is so tasteless.

Sold.

Some people are suspicious that Maurizio is

pulling the wool over their eyes,

and he's some kind of flamboyant artistic conman.

We will start with lot number one, Daddy Daddy by Maurizio Cattelan.

We'll begin this at 1.8 million.

His career is based on anecdotes and lies and imaginary stories.

Well, there's something quite sort of complicated about it because

Maurizio, as you know, is a very elusive character.

Maurizio doesn't really let anybody in.

He has many people around him, but

um, very few people are actually close to Maurizio.

Are we testing the volume or are we doing this?

Oh, OK.

I'm probably fatter than last time you interviewed me, no?

COCK CROWS

He grew up in a very poor family and he had practically no schooling.

His mother was ill through much of his childhood.

He feels like she blamed him for her illness.

She died, I think, when he was in his early 20s.

He was working to help support his family,

but he had a hard time keeping a job.

He was desperate, I think, to find another kind of life.

I started going to Milan.

I was getting more and more interested in art,

but I didn't have a place to sleep or to live.

It's not that poverty was new to me.

I had a long series of shitty jobs

and living a situation of mere survival,

I could see how easily everything COULD have gone wrong

and I could have been a kind of invisible member of society, no?

So, the idea of art had a certain urgency for me and eventually,

I realised I had nothing to lose.

There was this magazine called Flash Art,

which was and still is one of the most influential interesting

contemporary art magazines for a young artist or for any artist.

Appearing on the cover of Flash Art had an almost mythical status.

Instead of waiting for Flash Art to notice me,

I thought I would put my own work on the cover

so I made a sculpture,

which was a house of cards made with copies of Flash Art,

then I took a photo of it

and then I bought a whole bunch of real Flash Art magazines

and I pasted the photograph of my own sculpture onto the cover,

and I've been always very good at faking things

and so this object turned out to look exactly like a real Flash Art.

Then I went out and I distributed it in magazine stores

and in galleries and if you went to a certain store

and you bought a copy,

you would get my knock-off copy instead of the real copy.

It makes you wonder if being on the cover for real is real at all.

It was like a study of the art world and how it worked and who was in

charge of fame and success, if anyone.

The next thing he did was a series of works that were about avoiding

making anything.

They were basically embracing failure before even beginning.

In 1989, Maurizio was invited to his very first solo exhibition.

This was a really longed-for opportunity, his big break.

He was completely crippled by performance anxiety

and felt unable to come up with something that would rise to the occasion.

So, he locked the gallery door and put up a little Plexiglas sign that

read in Italian,

"Be right back," as if the gallery attendant had just popped out

for a coffee or to do a little chore.

The visitor was never allowed into the space

and there was nothing to see if they HAD been let in.

Maurizio's strategies of evasion have, at times,

um, bordered on criminal activity.

Rather than create a work,

he decided to break in to a nearby gallery and steal the contents of

another artist's exhibition

and then take the loot back to show as his own work.

The police had been called in.

For a moment or so, there was the possibility that he'd be arrested

and I think if he had, it would have pleased him no end.

The loot had to be returned and I believe that the director

of the museum had to actually intervene with the authorities

to keep Maurizio out of jail.

It's never about asking.

It's about taking it, seizing it.

-Stealing it.

-Yes.

He used this same tactic to fund his early career

in a pretty innovative way.

He did this work called the Oblomov Foundation.

The Oblomov Foundation was basically a scholarship to disappear, no?

It took its name from a Russian novel that describes a lazy man

that basically doesn't get out of his couch, of his bed.

He got 100 donors to each donate 100

and he offered this as a scholarship

for any young artist, but they had to agree

not to make any work for a year, which, of course,

would have put their career at something of a risk and, in fact,

no-one took him up on this generous offer.

And so I ended up keeping the money and using it to move to New York.

It was pretty tough because I came with very limited resources

and when I got a place, the regime was quite strict

because I didn't have much money.

At the beginning, I had, like, a budget of 5 a day.

He was really at the beginning of his career.

It wasn't a career. He had one show

in which he had a donkey and a chandelier.

He said he would like to, one day, show at Marian Goodman Gallery.

When I heard Maurizio say that, I thought, "That IS ambitious.

"How does he have the nerve?"

Nobody knew at that time who he was or what he was doing.

The donkey and the sausages and the chandelier?

Nobody found it interesting,

so nobody really paid attention to that.

I think an important shift in Maurizio's career took place

when he met Francesco Bonami.

Maurizio and Bonami

immediately became friends.

They were together as immigrant Italians in the New York art world.

We are living in the same street,

so we kind of see each other very often.

This figure that enters your life,

then you find yourself doing things for him.

Interestingly, Francesco Bonami put him in the Venice Biennale.

It was the first time

that he was invited to participate in the Biennale,

which is, of course, one of the international art world's

most important events,

so it was a very momentous occasion.

He was given a very prominent spot in the exhibition,

but Maurizio couldn't think of a work that could possibly rise to the

challenge of this wonderful opportunity,

so he thought of another of his ingenious escape routes.

Maurizio rented out his space in the Arsenale to a billboard company,

who then put a perfume ad in place of the work.

Some...I think slightly gullible collector bought it

for some probably not irrelevant amount of money.

What Maurizio was doing, what he continually did, was usurp

and turn on its head the whole relationship

between an organisation and the artists.

He was very interested in how he, as an agent,

could change the structure of the art world.

Massimo De Carlo, take three.

If you could just tell me your name and what it is that you do.

I think this is a stupid question.

Massimo De Carlo has been a friend and an enemy

or anyway has been a dealer, has been my gallerist for many years.

Maurizio say, "I would love to do a show like this,"

and I say, "Yes, OK, let's do it."

Perfect Day is a piece in which Massimo De Carlo

got duct-taped to the wall, like a strange, profane crucifixion.

I was supposed to be on the wall for two hours,

and it was very hot with lights,

so it was a little bit difficult.

I was very, very close to...

to, to collapse.

Unfortunately, Massimo fainted so we had to call the ambulance.

For another show, he had his Paris gallerist dress up in a costume

that was a pink rabbit shaped like a penis.

Perrotin, I guess, was a famous womaniser,

and so this was a commentary on his proclivities.

But sometimes... a little bit painful.

I think Maurizio, what he did was kind of flipped it on its head,

and you found yourself as the curator -

not the commissioning agent,

but the person who's actually been commissioned.

Maurizio is actually commissioning you.

He came up with some sort of weird formula

where people are complicit in their own abuse.

The more he abuses people, the more popular he becomes.

Contemporary art is about belief,

and successful living artists understand

that they have to corral belief in themselves.

It is really intriguing to think

of the way that Maurizio builds up relationships.

He has a very clear idea when he's talking to someone what

they're capable of doing for him,

what they're capable of realising FOR him and his work.

Are you in the picture too?

Is this voice coming at me?

Why not be in the picture?

Oh, no, I would NEVER go on camera.

I first met him when he came up for a meeting, I guess you'd say.

I think he was very shy and modest, or...so it seemed to me.

He did really have, among artists,

the most clear idea of what he wanted.

I invited him to do a piece in the summer show

and it was actually fantastic.

He had these two little taxidermied mice

sitting in sun chairs, basking in the sun,

and the next thing I knew,

there were a lot of people coming to the gallery to see this.

When I saw that he was showing with Marian Goodman,

then I began looking him up and,

um, checking him out.

I remember calling over to Marian's gallery and saying,

"Do you know how I could talk with Maurizio Cattelan?"

And somebody there said, "Oh, he's right here!"

And we set up a time to meet and I wasn't sure that it was Maurizio

when I met him, but it was.

Cos you had heard the stories that

he had other people who impersonated him.

He was charming.

He's like a magnet.

He pulls you in.

And I know that makes it sound strange

because if you're a journalist,

you have to have some distance,

but there is something about Maurizio

that just gets under your skin.

When his show was going to happen at Marian's,

that was a moment to do something with Vogue.

Maurizio is a perfect connoisseur

of many different aspects of the art world.

And as a good artist

should do now, in this time,

is able to manipulate them

in order to have a better access and a better visibility.

He had a highly developed understanding of this kind of

bizarre art world landscape.

You don't know it, but in this moment,

he's manipulating you because he's much more clever

than you and than me.

And he knows the system very well.

I mean, Maurizio is an artist that has not dedicated his life to art.

He's dedicated his life to success in art, which is different.

In 1999,

Maurizio made the work for which he is probably the most well-known.

I was invited to do a show that consisted of a sculpture

of John Paul II in this room, and just the Pope standing.

But then, as I was working on the piece,

literally as I was installing it,

the piece didn't have the presence that I thought he would have had,

and so that's when the idea came of changing the piece.

And so this image went from what was

supposed to be a sort of image of authority,

became this much more aggressive image

of the Pope being hit by a meteorite.

His profile increased hugely

when Christie's put the Pope on the auction block

and it sold for 900,000.

That changed his relationship to the market, there's no doubt.

The Pope piece slowly picked up speed and it started circulating

more and more in the media...

THEY ALL SPEAK THEIR OWN LANGUAGE

And it started having a very volatile life.

It was an image that everybody was uncomfortable with,

but that nobody could get enough reproducing.

It was shown in Poland at a moment in which there was a return

to very conservative, right-wing politics.

Two members of parliament were so offended

that they went to the exhibit,

broke through security

and they rolled the meteorite off of the Pope

and they tried to stand him up on his feet.

I thought that was quite important

in terms of the weight of a physical object, that's it's so unbearable...

somebody has the responsibility of changing it, no?

Ultimately, this sculpture was so popular, everyone wanted to show it.

In 2001,

Maurizio was invented to again participate in the Venice Biennale.

They asked me to show The Pope again.

It was becoming one of these situations

in which you only become known for a piece

and I was quite uncomfortable to be...

You know, it felt like the meteorite

had fell on me more than on the Pope!

I had this idea around the same time as this invitation and I thought

nobody had ever been in the Biennale by being elsewhere.

People were already projecting an idea of glamour and sort of

international jetset onto Venice and so I thought,

"Well, why don't we go to a place that is, like, the anti-Venice?"

I think many people didn't even think it was an artwork

and just thought it was some eccentric wealthy guy

up in the hills building his own dream!

He recreated a version of the Hollywood sign

and installed it on...actually a centuries-old dump above Palermo.

This Hollywood sign, which was a perfect replica, 1:1,

was installed onto a hill that was actually created by garbage.

He convinced a collector to charter a plane to bring a pile of patrons,

curators, collectors down to Palermo to have a champagne reception

just under the Hollywood sign in this dump.

At that time, it felt more of a provocation in a way,

and the fact that all these beautiful people

would be taken to a garbage dump and see this Hollywood sign,

it felt more meaningful than people probably expected.

At one point in the '90s,

there were so many biennials everywhere

and so I just felt that I and also many of my friends

were sort of employed in this system,

just went from biennial to another or just making work for biennials,

and so I thought, "What if I make my own biennial?"

I convinced a collector who had a hotel in the Caribbean

to give us the rooms. I asked for ads from magazines for free.

We had to fundraise for all the tickets

and I invited 15-20 artists, maybe.

Journalists came, but in my biennial, there was no art.

Basically, he organised a fake biennial.

There was no work on display.

One of the critics who went there from Frieze Magazine was absolutely

appalled that there was nothing to see except the artists themselves,

who were basically just on holiday, swimming and drinking.

It was just an exhibition of everything that surrounds art.

I LOVE the Caribbean Biennial.

I find that kind of work not only amusing, but somehow to kind of,

like, puncture some of the pretensions of the art world.

It was also quite awkward because then,

when you bring all these artists together,

it became a sort of social experiment and,

yeah, now it feels... I don't know how I feel about it.

You know, he's a little bit tortured

in the way that many creative people are -

self-questioning, wondering about their value,

wondering if what they're doing is meaningful or ridiculous

or excellent or asinine.

I know artists are all on a different level.

They have a percentage of being a piece of shit.

For Maurizio, I think his art has been his mission,

the sacred part of his life.

If a relationship threatened the sacred space...

..you know the relationship would stop, not his art.

Many, many people have always asked me through the years to actually,

erm, talk about Maurizio and I've never really wanted to.

I think that...

..he will end up alone.

That's what he thinks, too.

HUBBUB

THEY SPEAK ITALIAN

The actual funny thing was he didn't really know what I did cos he lives

mostly in the States, and so he didn't really have a clue

of what my job exactly was.

At the time we actually met each other,

my speciality was bustin' press conferences

and asking George Clooney to marry me or...

Asking Antonio Banderas if he could autograph my knickers.

And so he used to actually insist to follow me

while I was actually filming these things.

SHE SPEAKS IN OWN LANGUAGE

My writers who write the show with me,

they all know Maurizio really well

and they've always called him the ghost-writer of my shows.

He saw things that I didn't know I had.

He saw probably potential and he pushed me to the limit

in that sense and, erm, I think, yeah,

that's probably what he gave to me,

what he...you know. He always thinks that everything is possible and

I do too now.

I mean, the younger woman always ends up with the older man.

In a way, it's...

kind of fucked-up, but...

Older men, they get a good deal out of it.

I met him at a party.

I remember showing up and I just noticed this guy

in really tight pants,

that was the first thing I noticed and he was drinking tea.

I didn't know who he was,

I just saw him kind of off in the corner, watching.

The first date that we had, he gave me a black eye!

By accident, but...

It was just an accident,

but I had to show up for work the next day and everyone was like,

"What are you doing? Don't go out with this guy again!

"He's nuts!"

He's never wanted to get married and he's never wanted to have kids

so we're pretty much in agreement with that.

As long as it's nice, then it's nice.

I ended the relationship

and I ended it every single time we actually ended it.

We had this very strong connection, and we still do, no matter what.

We love each other dearly, I don't know if this is...

He snores.

DOG SNORES

He's the only dog that Maurizio hasn't stuffed yet, so...

There was a piece of a taxidermied dog.

Another funny type of piece, but dealing with life and death.

With that piece,

we had several people come in and look at it and go,

"You have such a cute dog and it just sits in the same place

"all the time." Funnily enough,

our dogs don't fall for it, but plenty of people fall for it.

One piece I've always loved is the early piece of the squirrel

who has committed suicide.

He is sitting at a kitchen table and his head is slumped on the table and

there's a revolver on the floor.

And there again, it's one of these pieces, you laugh when you see it.

It's very funny, but it goes way beyond being a joke.

I think the power of Maurizio's work derives from the fact that it is

sometimes deeply serious and deeply sorrowful work.

When you first see one of his sculptures,

there's an instant gratification where you understand the twist.

But then when you spend more time with the works,

you really see these profound themes emerge.

The works deal in a poetic and thoughtful way with failure...

..with feeling alienated from the world around you.

There's a really searing critique of power and its misuses in the work

and, ultimately,

many of the most powerful works

are about death and mortality.

A lot of people find it funny.

I find it...

sometimes very tragic and, erm,

I do believe that there is a lot

of pain in there.

He has a lot of anxiety, I think, and feeling like

someone is around smothering him

or he has this responsibility to someone.

He would just leave.

I mean, he can't deal with it at all.

A lot of what he does is about that sense of hiding,

of retreating or becoming invisible behind the work.

-INTERVIEWER:

-How did you become so interested in Maurizio?

My mother knew Maurizio in the early days - in Milan, in New York,

in the late '80s, I think.

She was kind of in the scene.

So, they were friends?

Yeah, they dated. Well, sort of.

I mean, it wasn't serious.

So, do you spend a lot of time with him?

No, but I kind of feel like I know him from his work.

Maybe that's a better way to know him.

I mean, with an artist,

doesn't their work speak for them?

Maurizio so often uses his very distinctive likeness in his work,

but sometimes the self-portraits

are not direct mimicry of his actual face,

they're these characters which function as personae.

A lot of my work had to do with the problem of identity.

Maurizio generates all these other identities, like Daddy Daddy.

Daddy Daddy was a sculpture which depicted the figure of Pinocchio

lying face down in a pool, as if the little boy had drowned.

It could have been a suicide, it could have been a murder,

it might have been a terrible accident.

It was certainly a very sorry scene.

The title is drawn from the Gospels - "Father, Father,

"why hast thou forsaken me?"

It's the ninth hour, which is also the title of the sculpture

of the Pope, which is the time when Christ is on the cross

and cries out to his father.

Maurizio's works are kind of little poems

with an actual figure in them

so they're quite risky.

It's almost a miracle,

this idea that you would be able to nail a woman to the wall.

I mean, that's inappropriate, or have the Pope hit by a meteor,

or float a dead Pinocchio in the Guggenheim.

I mean, how many people want a dead Pinocchio

floating in a pool of water? I mean, come on!

The fact that people do is remarkable.

GAVEL BANGS

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.

Before I open the floor to bidding,

I would like to warmly welcome you

to this evening's sale of contemporary art.

Lot number five, Daddy Daddy by Maurizio Cattelan.

We will start this at 700,000.

At 850.

900,000.

It's in the room at 9...

1 million. 1.1 million.

In the far left corner, 1.2 million.

Still against you, Svetlana.

1.8 million.

At 2.2 million,

the bid is on my right.

Last chance, then.

Sold.

Art really became perceived as an asset class

during the last recession.

After Lehman Brothers collapsed in September 2008,

most of the world went into a deep economic ravine

and one of the first things to pop out of that ravine

was the art market.

Lot number 31 - Maurizio Cattelan...

Because his market is global enough and is in some highly visible hands,

including museum collections,

Cattelan work is perceived as a financial asset.

At 2 million. Any more than 2 million?

Look, it's like any asset.

Art as an investable commodity, not as a piece of art,

but purely on a sort of mathematical standpoint,

has been one of the best asset classes

for, I'm willing to bet, for the last 15 years.

It's a multi-billion-dollar annual revenue business.

An artist may be a real genius today,

but if he is spoiled or contaminated by the sea of money around him,

his genius will completely melt and become zero.

If he's going around too much,

then it became a commodity and we are not here to sell commodities.

There is something wrong about the system.

I shall sell it, then, for 40 million.

Thank you, Lisa!

He just wanted you to treat it

as something you don't really give a shit about,

but that you're interested in.

As an investment, there's more and more ways

that you can go about doing that.

So, this is Jamie and that's Frank.

It's funny cos they have their guns, they have their radios,

they have their tear gas, their bullet holes.

And their bullet cartridge.

There's definitely a segment of his market which is populated

by wheeler-dealers -

collector/dealers who have huge inventories

in a particular artist's work.

We're collectors, but, at the same time,

we're art dealers, so pretty much what I do is I like buying art

and artists that I love, respect, want to live with.

With art, people go, "But what does it mean?"

I'm like, "It doesn't mean anything.

"What does it mean to you? That's what it means, period."

Lot number 15 - Frank And Jamie by Maurizio Cattelan.

I can sell it for 2 million, then.

All done?

Sold. Thank you so much.

Maybe, in the end, making money is art

and working is art and good business is the BEST art.

Maurizio was criticised for creating sort of jokes which are like riddles

for the cognoscenti

and then it's kind of like, if you get the joke,

you're on the inside, and if you don't get the joke,

then you're on the outside.

So, it's sort of using the vanity of collectors

and their desire to be in on the joke against them,

in the sense of pulling money out of their pockets to pay for things that

are basically junk.

I think Cattelan works appeal to collectors

who want to be perceived as adventurous and knowing.

-INTERVIEWER:

-So, you own Daddy Daddy.

-Yeah.

How do you know what I own?

For instance, Daddy Daddy - it's a tough work.

You need to have a pond or a fountain in your home.

I bought the Daddy Daddy because it was on the cover of the arts section

of the New York Times when it was in the Guggenheim show.

It's difficult to install,

the subject matter can be exceedingly difficult.

There's all kinds of reasons why someone's not going to buy a piece

of a hanging boy or, you know, a sculpture of Adolf Hitler.

It's usually installed facing a wall so you have to get up very close to

see the face, and when people see who it is,

they jump out of their skin.

People are still afraid of his appearance.

Is he begging forgiveness?

Is he saying, "What have I done?"

It's just merely a way of getting a headline and drawing attention

to his work and unfortunately, in this case,

we have no choice but to denounce it and to protest.

The first time we brought it into our home, my daughter,

who, at that point in time, was probably

about seven or eight years old and did not know who Hitler was,

just completely freaked out by the creepiness of it.

Frankly, even if you DO understand it, you know, like,

"Why are you living with a sculpture of Hitler in your home?"

A lot of his work is profound and interesting,

but it can be very demanding to live with.

One thing that is very intriguing is that the Hitler sculpture traded

behind the scenes for 10 million a few years ago.

I'm always intrigued when the market rewards difficulty.

You need to go pretty far, otherwise the piece doesn't exist.

You have to convince the museum director and the curator

that a hole in the floor is necessary for the piece.

You need to push

your friends and enemies and collaborators further and

you have to be uncomfortable about it.

The further you go, the more satisfaction is created

by the level of discomfort in which all the participants were put.

We are used to thinking of monuments

as places where victories are celebrated,

but what if, instead of celebrating a victory,

a public sculpture or a monument was

to capture a loss?

L.O.V.E. is a public sculpture

placed in front of the Stock Exchange in Milan.

He has a great understanding of what it is

that will make the media or the wider public

really come to his work.

Obviously, it's a piece about hating wealth or about losing money, but,

to me, it's mostly about a sense of grandiosity that has been dissipated

or an epoch that has come to an end.

He must be a bit of a masochist cos he's constantly asking for abuse.

It was very controversial when it went up,

but I think that somehow it was welcomed with sympathy

by the people.

I'm expecting people to react strongly,

in a good way or a bad way.

I don't think he'd do it if he didn't think he was going

to get scolded. That's the joy that he gets.

I think there is too much work that is just about being

a picture on the wall that we are contented looking at.

I think art needs to be somehow disruptive

to then reconfigure opinions and limits.

Three hanging kids on a tree branch in Milan

is an intensely discomforting, but yet powerful image.

I think it's amongst his most important pieces of work.

When I was making those works,

I was interested in understanding - what can we bear looking at?

And also, what is a physical object that is so uncomfortable that it

requires somebody to do something to it.

So, one local guy just decided to do something.

He got a ladder, climbed the tree,

he cut down one of the children, then the other one,

but he lost his balance and he fell.

He was injured,

people called an ambulance and he was taken away and, later,

he was arrested for defacing public property.

SIREN WAILS

Some of my pieces have been damaged, like the hanging children.

I think there is often, on one hand,

this sort of media frenzy that excites people.

And then there is also somebody who feels that the physical object

needs to be corrected.

There's an uncanny beauty to Maurizio's work -

the way in which the work is kind of

believable in the world for a moment.

You know, is that really a boy hanging?

We know it's not a boy hanging.

We know that the Pope isn't hit by a meteorite.

We know this horse is not alive,

it's maybe taxidermied, maybe even false,

but just for that moment,

you kind of believe there's a horse there that's hanging there.

Suddenly, this anxiousness is

infused in the work and becomes kind of a potent...

existential question.

We know that Massimiliano is not Maurizio Cattelan,

but Massimiliano Gioni as Maurizio Cattelan...

actually, there's this moment of suspension of belief.

Massimiliano Gioni has performed the role of Cattelan,

done interviews for him

and performed as him for an extended period of time.

Always send somebody else to speak in your place.

HE LAUGHS

We met in '97 or '98.

He had already decided in a way

that he didn't want to talk about his work.

Massimiliano was very energetic and informed and we hit it off and

then it happened that one of the days in which we met,

I had to do an interview with the radio

and I say to him, "Why don't you do it?"

And I say, "Sure."

And so I gave the journalists Massimiliano's phone number and

they called him and he did it live.

I don't even know if he heard the interview or not,

but he called me up the next day and said, "Oh, it was great."

Every time that I was asked to do an interview or presentation,

I would ask Massimiliano to speak in my place.

Good evening, everybody.

Besides the interviews,

I was also doing all the lectures for Maurizio in public or going to

universities to teach instead of being...

I don't know, it's probably close to hundreds of interviews and

presentations and press releases.

Massimiliano's impersonation of Maurizio is not unprecedented.

Quite famously,

Warhol enlisted one of his acolytes to perform the role of Warhol

in a lecture tour of the US. So it has been done before.

What's different here is Massimiliano

really was involved in the creation

of a certain kind of verbal persona.

I'm going to try to go through, actually, 273 slides.

If you fall asleep, please do.

'I think part of the reason why Maurizio liked this situation'

was also that he doesn't like to talk

and so it was a way of solving a problem and

saying yes to interviews that otherwise he wouldn't do himself.

When people realised that Massimiliano was not Maurizio,

sometimes people were very upset

and felt like they had been duped or taken in.

Other people in the audience thought it was very funny

and really enjoyed the ruse.

I think it depends on your relationship to authenticity and

what you expect in terms of the authenticity of the artist.

I think it was a clever thing to do,

to enlist the support of someone who could bring their articulacy

to Maurizio's work.

There was another way to cultivate

that sort of misinformation that made

the work richer or any way...

more complex.

When we are in this process of doing interviews,

I had a sense of his madness because it would never end, you know.

On many levels, he has a sort of addictive personality.

It's a sort of appetite that can't get satisfied.

And I think for a while, actually,

recognition was perceived by him

as a restriction of possibilities.

It sort of shrinks your options.

Probably what he wants is to keep looking

and I think this show at the Guggenheim, on many levels,

is an answer to that.

One day, he walked into my office with this collage that he had made,

where he had cut and pasted images of all his work

and he said, "This is what I want to do."

I thought it was preposterous that actually the Guggenheim would do

something like this

and that Maurizio would risk the safety of his work.

I think he realised he had to take on the building.

The most controversial building in the history of New York City -

the Solomon R Guggenheim Museum.

No artists ever win with the Guggenheim.

Every time they try to do something,

they just enhance the absolute, unique spirit of that museum.

I think once you get up to a certain point,

now you're in the catbird seat.

Now you can do things like go to the Guggenheim and say, you know,

"Hang the whole body of my work from the ceiling," and it happens.

Unlike a conventional retrospective, where you're really selecting the

highlights, the concept of this show was that everything he'd ever made

-was hanging...

-In this rather disrespectful way.

He used the analogy, many times, of dirty laundry hung up.

Hanging up the family cat by its tail.

The mass slaughter.

Like a big pinata.

Sausages in a butcher's window.

A toy that you would see on an infant's crib.

That was the whole point - was to be disrespectful.

I met with the key players to see if we could physically do it,

whether the building could bear the weight of the sculpture.

There are 12 ribs that come down from the skylight

and the work had to be evenly distributed on those ribs.

Our engineers reviewed the plans and came up with a plan

that would allow us to suspend the work in the rotunda.

What I said to Maurizio at the time was that if we were to do this,

they had to be the actual objects.

We couldn't use exhibition copies because the risk had to be real.

Most of these pieces were made to sit on the ground or

stand on the ground.

Novecento, the horse, of course,

was something that was engineered to hang,

but very little else.

The way we installed the show is that the truss started off

on the ground and then gradually was lifted up.

Just really a few inches a couple of times a day...

as more works were added.

Our conservator's job is to make sure

that the works are entirely safe

at every point that they're on display.

Usually, you know, you're concerned about people touching the work

or something like that.

This was a whole different set of challenges.

So, over the course of a month of the installation,

the truss gradually ascended.

And all of the works were added, ending with Novecento,

the suspended horse.

The revelation that occurred to both Maurizio

and to me at about the same time was that, by combining all of the work,

he had created an independent work of art in that installation,

albeit a temporary one.

But it could never happen again and probably shouldn't.

In the back of my mind, I was very worried that some miscalculation

had happened and that the Frank Lloyd Wright building

would crumble and it would be my fault.

But I think that that's part of the power of the exhibition itself,

that it looked preposterous.

I think that was really key to the experience of the show.

We have a policy of no photography in the exhibitions,

but we recognised the fact that people just needed to record it

because it was so extraordinary and

then it was wonderfully distributed out in the world.

People went crazy for this show.

The museum had to extend their hours.

There were lines around the block.

This sight - good or bad, crapola or transcendence -

you'll remember it. This changes your idea.

I was expecting it to have this anarchic, rebellious quality,

for it to be this very bold gesture of spectacle.

But really,

what struck me more than anything was the intense vulnerability.

Well, Maurizio hates his works.

He hates what he does.

Every time you ask him about something, he's like,

"Oh, it's crap.

"I can't look at it." I don't know, it's like...

He has, like, an internal conflict.

He can't allow himself to actually

admire it and say, "You know, I've done a good job.

"I like this."

His work really worked when he was the guy outside and, as an outsider,

then he can launch these missiles into the art world.

But once he becomes one of the expensive and valued artists...

..you can't be a renegade.

You can't be the prankster.

You can't be the court jester any more.

The announcement of his retirement was greeted with great scepticism.

Just remember, he announces his retirement

at the absolute peak of his career.

I mean, he works an insane amount.

He's working every day and he's always thinking about the next move.

I think if he were ever completely satisfied or ever completely happy,

he would just be done. I mean, he'll be happy if he's dead.

Yeah, I think he's obsessed.

He's made for art and when we were together,

he used to say that art was his other woman...

was his other girlfriend,

but I think she was the most

important one out of the two of us...

..and so I think, yeah, ultimately...

..that's the companion with which he's going to die...

for sure.

Although at some point, we did want to have children,

it's just we never really managed and so...

It was very, very difficult but I know, in the end, it was...

Really, it was for the best.

I don't think we would have been happy together

and, erm...

We have our arts, so we don't die of truth.

YENTOB: And Maurizio Cattelan's

comeback show, Not Afraid Of Love,

is currently running at the

Monnaie de Paris in France.

OK. Paris gallerist. A Paris gallerist, OK.

-Paris gallerist.

-Paris gallerist. Paris gallerist... OK.

-So, just from that line, then?

-Yeah.

For another show, he had his Paris gallerist dress up in a costume

that was a pink rabbit in the shape of a penis.

Pink rabbit in the shape of a penis.

In the shape of a penis.

Shaped like a penis.

A penis. A penis.

OK, now we're done.

LAUGHTER

You never have to say it again.

YENTOB: Victoria Armutt - there's something fishy going on here.

She's surely another Cattelan creation.

Or is it the work of the film-maker, Maura Axelrod?