Maurizio Cattelan: Art is about forgetting all these feelings, good an...

I tend not to work with a specific person in mind. Art is a matter of statistics. It's not about individuals. It's about people.

Maurizio Cattelan

mind people art

My ideas are all the same but look different.

Maurizio Cattelan

different looks ideas

I was a loser, most concerned with making a living. It took me 30 years to understand... I had to reinvent a system, find a way out, and set some rules that could work for me and a few others. I guess in the end that's what we all are trying to do.

Maurizio Cattelan

failure trying years

The current climate doesn't represent a threat to the production of art but to the market. I think it's time for artists to get over auction houses, galleries, and high-production-value exhibitions and start using our voices again.

Maurizio Cattelan

voice art thinking

I do not know exactly why, but it seems to me that images do not belong to anybody but are instead there, at the disposal of all.

Maurizio Cattelan

seems knows

I don't design. I don't paint. I absolutely never touch my works.

Maurizio Cattelan

collaboration paint design

It's in our nature. If you are a plumber, there is an objective way to establish whether you put together a great piping system or not. Art is a bit more slippery than that. So, when you fill a gallery with dirt and someone comes along waving wads of bills, it's difficult not to take them because they become a tangible acknowledgement that what you've been doing actually makes sense.

Maurizio Cattelan

tangible together art

The market is like a machine that needs to be constantly excited. It needs to constantly produce wealth and more excitement. There are some leading players who are always there before everyone else, and they set market trends, they make people safe about the excitement. Of course, those who buy it first are the first to drop it. It's an ongoing game.

Maurizio Cattelan

player games people

I'm criticizing the way they are perceived. I was going through a book of Marina Abramovic and Ulay's 1970s performance work the other day. These people did two, even three Documentas or Venice Biennales over the course of a decade without any fuss. They would just treat it as any of their other engagements, with the same level of dignity and commitment they'd reserve for a one-day event in a small gallery on the Austrian mountains.

Maurizio Cattelan

two book commitment

Part of the blame can be put at the artists' door, too - no question. But I see our involvement more as a consequence. When there is too much money at stake, the whole system gets corrupted. Artists can be very vulnerable to these mechanisms.

Maurizio Cattelan

too-much artist doors

I don't think that the big crunch should be seen as a menace, but rather as an opportunity. It's one of these times in -history - and we have plenty of examples from the past - where it's possible to really make a difference. And if art is serious about claiming a central role in today's society and culture, this is the best chance it's had in ages.

Maurizio Cattelan

opportunity past art

I'm not saying the 1970s was a golden age - I don't believe such a thing exists in art . . . It would be like talking about a golden age of science. But it's true that those were slightly more ideological times, and the relevance of artists wasn't established by their CVs but by their work.

Maurizio Cattelan

talking believe art

What’s the point of our life? everything seems absurd until we die and then it makes sense.

Maurizio Cattelan

politics

Every morning, we choose between milk or tea or coffee. Usually, I know what I like, but I don't rule out changing my idea sometimes. The editing process is one of the most important parts in everyday life. The same is with my work: mistakes are part of the decision-making process.

Maurizio Cattelan

coffee work morning life

Every work of art is a great promise of escape and, therefore, like an open invitation.

Maurizio Cattelan

escape great work art

From my point of view, humour and irony include tragedy; they're two sides of the same coin.

Maurizio Cattelan

view irony point-of-view tragedy

Never give an artist like me carte blanche: he would think it's simply toilet paper.

Maurizio Cattelan

never think me artist

Based on my experience, it's considerably difficult to force a donkey into doing something it perceives to be dangerous for whatever reason.

Maurizio Cattelan

doing difficult dangerous experience

There are times when being scandalous or provocative can help bring focus to issues of major concern.

Maurizio Cattelan

bring help being focus

Laughter is a Trojan horse to enter into direct contact with the unconscious, strike the imagination, and trigger visceral reactions.

Maurizio Cattelan

strike horse laughter imagination

Art is about forgetting all these feelings, good and bad, and trying to understand what acts will last longer, which symbols will remain in history. It's a question of perspective: The further you get from the past, the more concrete and plausible it seems.