An interview with a dead man: Maurizio Cattelan
Maurizio Cattelan will die after he’s read this introduction. So, therefore we can finally begin our interview with his spirit.
Maurizio Cattelan has always dealt with the topic of death in his works, and he has undertaken countless imaginary interviews with artists from the past.
The media has always glorified him and yet, at the same time, it has snubbed him in a merely simplistic way and relegated him to that class of those brilliant provocateurs who remain an end unto themselves. Just how many people have smiled, have been distressed, destabilised, saddened or filled with glee in relation to his creations.
Maurizio Cattelan, with his art, combines melancholy with irony, sarcasm with drama, the macabre with the jovial. After having toyed for so long with death, it became inevitable that, sooner or later, it would have befallen him. But why now? Obviously, it was to let us have –exclusively – the first and only interview with his spirit!
Cattelan has never enjoyed speaking about himself. He does not believe that he has anything interesting to say. He used Massimiliano Gioni as his alter ego to be his “interpreter” in his relations with the media during the first few years of his career. Who knows whether his spirit will be more communicative or whether, in this case too, it’ll choose another spirit to talk on its behalf? Let’s find out together!
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Dear Spirit of Maurizio Cattelan, we are now about to set off upon a Dickensian journey with you. If you were asked to choose a spirit from the past, a spirit from the present and a spirit from the future, who would you wish to be impersonated by?
MC: I would request Diogenes as my spirit from the past, so I would learn to live with nothing, and I would have the pleasure to encounter Alexander the Great and tell him in no uncertain terms to go to hell. The spirit of the present is the guide behind the book that I am currently reading on my bedside table and the spirit of the future would be, without any shade of doubt, some sort of fertiliser.
Dear Spirit, now that you have encountered Death, what do you think frightened you most about Death when you were living and what do you think about it now?
MC: Seen through the perspective of a lengthy period of time, I like to think that Death is something that makes us better as a species. If you think that you are unique, then Death remains something which is absolute and definitive. However, if you believe that you are part of a complex system then you might see it as a process. And, if it did not exist, it would have to be invented. And, anyway, it would seem that we are actually more worried by the loss of something whilst we are living – the death of others, for example. Death in itself bears a high-sounding name and a frightening image. Nevertheless, our own deaths might also be seen as a liberation from all of these earthly preoccupations.
Do you think that you have spoken too little so far? If you were born again, would you relate in a different way to other people?
MC: I am not waiting to be born again in order to make myself better. I prefer doing that sort of thing every single day without resorting to putting things off until a later moment in time. If I realise that I am dissatisfied with something, then I try to modify it. I am not fond of regrets and neither do I look back with any form of recrimination. If being dead enabled me to look in at me from outside and to be objective towards myself, it would indeed be very instructive. But, also very destructive. Death allows you to destroy your ego. I have always been highly interested in the spiritual path undertaken by Buddhist monks and their ability to annihilate the material and egoistic parts of their very beings in order to achieve a state of Nirvana.
Dear Spirit, what do you think that you have not had the opportunity to tell in your art? Is there still something that you would have liked to explore artistically in your art?
MC: As someone who has died, you soon realise that, after all is said and done, it might not actually be so necessary to tell the world every single thing about you. What matters is the path that you have followed, the very fact that you have attempted something and that you have taken risks. You might even regret not having achieved absolutely everything possible. I hope, though, that in my case, I have always also possessed the courage to lose, at times.
Which roles do you think that you have best interpreted in your life?
MC: I have always been compulsive. I am compulsive to the most negative extent that this word may imply.
Which roles that you have portrayed in your art have given you the most satisfaction?
MC: Each and every work for me has been the quest for the solution to a mystery. Some of my works have awarded me particular satisfaction since, even today, it seems that they actually managed to find that solution. Other works have awarded me only partial solutions that haven’t achieved any sort of completeness.
Who would you like to come to your funeral?
MC: I have never been able to imagine my funeral. I can only imagine myself as if I had disappeared, been turned into dust, and been swept far away. I hope that absolutely no trace of me at all is left. Other than an enigma.
If you could turn back time, would you still read Orlando?
MC: If I had never enjoyed it, I wouldn’t still be reading it now. Since I am now dead, I no longer even need my glasses.
You have already used a similar trick in the past when you put up a sign which was the emblem of one of your exhibitions. Would you still like to use that sign again or would you like to go even further, into the beyond, this time?
MC: Back soon.
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