On Thursday, drab Americans attending the opening of "All," the Maurizio Cattelan retrospective about to open at the Guggenheim Museum, were outnumbered by Italian speakers by a ratio of two to one. Even in a city with an outspoken fondness for Italian art (one thinks of the Titians stashed a few blocks away), the Guggenheim show is a big event for Italian expatriates in New York.
"Cattelan is our favorite," remarked one woman, eagerly pointing out the cameramen from Italian television networks who were shifting their viewfinders across the rotunda where works by the artist -- supposedly all of the works from his career -- have been dangled from a complex arrangement of ropes and scaffolding.
Hanging things is a theme for Cattelan: In 2004, Cattelan made mainstream news in Italy with "Untitled," which involved hanging three lifelike models of children by their necks from a tree in the Piazza XXIV Maggio in Milan. The mobile-like installation at the Guggenheim, however, has a disconcerting but less demented effect. Viewers crane back their necks to see the product of many years of hard labor. Dangled together in the Guggenheim atrium, the objects take on a monumental quality, belied by their resemblance to a precarious toy or mobile. None of the works in the retrospective -- not even Cattelan's photographs or prints -- are fixed to the museum walls. In mid-air, they hang always a few feet away from where any viewer could possibly be standing.
One result of this gimmick is that the works evade close scrutiny, and seem to mock any attempt at serious contemplation. Visitors who try to look at anything for too long will eventually be distracted by "Untitled" (2003), a small toy drummer hanging in the towering cloud of art that periodically breaks into bursts of noise.
Irreverence -- for the art world, for art history, and for the culture at large -- seems to be the defining feature of "All." The famous demonstration of this sensibility is Cattelan's mischievous sculpture "Him" (2001) -- hung towards the top of the mass of suspended works -- in which Adolf Hitler is depicted in his knees, his eyes and face in an entreating pose, with his body reduced to the menace-free scale of a hobbit. ("Fun-size Fürher!" exclaimed one visitor, as his companion rolled her eyes.)
Closer to the floor is probably Cattelan's most famous sculpture, a wax-and-resin model of Pope John Paul II having just been struck down by a meteorite. Entitled "La Nona Ora" ("The Ninth Hour"), it depicts His Holiness with an expression of anguish and overbearing worry. It's a shame you can't look at it closer, for in doing so, there's a chance you might decode the emotion on the Pope's naturalistically rendered face. He's been struck down by an arbitrary message from outer space. In some ways, this is a fine metaphor for "All," which feels both miraculous and undecipherable by design.
-Reid Singer, ARTINFO
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