Maurizio Cattelan

Galleria Massimo Minini, Brescia
Private Collection (acquired from the above)
Christie's, London, June 30, 2008, Lot 54
Acquired by the present owner from the above

Brescia, Galleria Massimo Minini, Maurizio Cattelan, October - November 1997 (as part of the original installation)
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

Exh. Cat., Turin, Castello di Rivoli, Museo d'Arte Contemporanea, Maurizio Cattelan, 1997 (catalogue published in Milan, 1999), p. 48, illustrated in color (detail of original installation at Galleria Massimo Minini, 1997)
Exh. Cat., Dijon, Le Consortium, Maurizio Cattelan, 1998, p. 118, illustrated (detail of original installation at Galleria Massimo Minini, 1997)
Burkhard Riemschneider and Uta Grosenick, eds., Art at the Turn of the Millennium, Cologne, 1999, no. 3, p. 96, illustrated in color (detail of original installation at Galleria Massimo Minini, 1997)
Francesco Bonami, et al., Maurizio Cattelan, London, 2000, pp. 102-105, illustrated in color (original installation at Galleria Massimo Minini, 1997)
Alison Gingeras, "A Sociology Without Truth," Parkett, no. 59, Zurich, September 2000, p. 53, illustrated (detail of original installation at Galleria Massimo Minini, 1997)
"New York: Cattelan among artists for Boss Prize," Il Giornalle dell'Arte, no. 191, Rome, September 2000, illustrated
Maurizio Bortolotti, ed., Il Critico Come Curatore, Milan, 2003, illustrated
Exh. Cat., New York, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Maurizio Cattelan: All, 2011, cat. no. 52, p. 210, illustrated in color (another example) and fig. 17, p. 63, illustrated in color (detail of original installation at Galleria Massimo Minini, 1997)

This work is in excellent condition. The heads can be hung in any arrangement. Very close inspection shows some minute inconsistencies to the latex rubber surfaces and a few minute short hairline drying cracks to the black pigment of the hair areas of a very small number of the heads, which is inherent to the nature of the medium.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
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Maurizio Cattelan has been one of the most inventive and consistently surprising artists working on the international scene since the late 1980s, producing an extraordinarily diverse and innovative body of work that forces us to question the way in which we view and understand the world around us. Cattelan can arguably be regarded as an ‘anti-artist,’ subverting the accepted methods and ideals behind the creation of more traditional art: “I am not an artist. I really don’t consider myself an artist.” (The artist cited in an interview with Nancy Spector in Francesco Bonami, et. al., Maurizio Cattelan, London, 2000, p. 9) Born in 1960 in Padua, Cattelan’s youth coincided with a time of political and social upheaval within Italy: this spirit of insurgence and the potential for change seems to infuse the artist’s oeuvre, imbuing his works with a sense of rebellion against sociological, cultural and political norms. As a result, Cattelan’s individual installations, varied as they are, can be interpreted not only as the work of a brilliantly provocative creative force whose work consistently challenges accepted boundaries and transcends the more familiar concepts of art history, but also arguably as a profound examination of the definition of ‘normality’ itself.

Exhibiting a coruscating and curiously subversive wit, Spermini is a consummate example of Cattelan’s examination into the possibilities of self-portraiture, a genre he began exploring during the second half of the 1990s. Cattelan utterly revolutionizes the depiction of the self - a concept which had been a key facet of art historical tradition throughout the centuries – within Spermini and other works in which the artist acts as his own model, such as Mini-Me (1999) and La Rivoluzione siamo noi (2000). Spermini presents the viewer with a multiplicity of reproductions of the artist’s own face, re-created by means of masks which gaze down, almost mockingly, towards the onlooker in the manner of wax effigies. The pithily humorous title, translating as ‘little sperm,’ typifies Cattelan’s sometimes mordent wit whilst adding another layer of allusion to the work. The work was initially part of an installation of 500 masks at Galleria Massimo Minini in Brescia in 1997. Nancy Spector analyzes the psycho-sexual connotations of Spermini, arguing that “the piece suggests a swarm of genetic carriers, all with the same DNA code… Presented as if sprayed willy-nilly over the walls, these spermini imply spilt seed. For Cattelan, a former altar boy and lapsed Catholic, this work about wasted expenditure must have had a deeper, more personal resonance than its joking tone might suggest…” (Nancy Spector, ‘Duality and Death’ in Exh. Cat., New York, The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Maurizio Cattelan: All, 2011, p. 64)

Whilst the multiplication of the self that recurs 150 times within Spermini seems to indicate an almost primeval desire to perpetuate and glorify an individual gene pool, the masked re-iterations themselves, despite their verisimilitude, seem oddly quiescent and motionless. It is an intriguing contradiction that encourages Spector to posit a connection with Freudian theories of the Uncanny in relation to the self-portraits: “They look just like Cattelan but are clearly and utterly inert. It is from such slippages between perceived opposites – self and lost other, the dead and the undead – that a sense of the uncanny emerges.” (Ibid., p. 71) Spermini intelligently addresses this dichotomy between the attempt to re-produce reality within self-portraiture and the inherent illusion of artistic representation, with each mask distilling the essence of Cattelan’s appearance and expression whilst celebrating the unchanging nature of a self-portrait, capturing a particular moment in time for an aeon.  Ultimately, Spermini brilliantly encapsulates Cattelan’s utterly distinctive and remarkably diverse artistic practice, and can be seen as a highly significant instance of the artist’s subversion of creative, cultural and social traditions.