G.J.: Graduate Journal
M.G.: Marizio Cattelan (via Masimiliano Gioni)

G.J. Are we allowed to know your real name?

M.G. Massimiliano Gioni - but if we do the interview as Maurizio, it's just Maurizio.

G.J. I thought we were going to do the interview in a schizophrenic way?

M.G. We'll work on that. We'll see what happens.

G.J. Okay.

M.G. Because we're not supposed to be clear about it in interviews.

G.J. At all? So are you always Maurizio?

M.G. No, not at all.

G.J. Are there many Maurizio's? Spokesmen?

M.G. Not really. Sometimes it's more improvised. You find a journalist who you know is an accomplice and so you just let him make it up himself.

G.J. So, in fact, when you make it up, you make it up. It's completely...

M.G. It's completely up to me.

G.J. And it really wouldn't matter what you said?

M.G. It does to me. But Maurizio doesn't interfere.

G.J. Are you friends with him? Are you quite close? Do you know each other very well?

M.G. We've known each other since we started working together. We're friends.

G.J. Do you consider that the work you do, is a collaboration between the two of you?

M.G. No. It's functional; it's about solving a problem. Maurizio wouldn't be particularly articulate in public or in interviews and this is the easiest way to make him entertaining. It's about making things more interesting for the public, I guess.

G.J. So when he doesn't speak it has more to do with his being shy than because he...

M.G. It's not about his being shy. It's the simplest solution to get a good result.

G.J. But for an artist these days, the speeches and lectures you give, and the statements you make are very important to the work in general...

M.G. The point is, that in Maurizio's work, which relies so much on confusion, and on questioning authority and the privilege of the artist, the statements can be as important as the doubt that you are creating when you let people believe that any sentence is interchangeable. Maybe statements never really explain the work of any artist, maybe the work produces consensus because of very different reasons, which at times are beyond the artist's control.

G.J. Would you say that his work is not solely about confusion and about the authority of the artist but, with figures like the fallen Pope and the kneeling Hitler, that it's about authority in general?

M.G. It's both and it grew on different levels. At the beginning it was about the question, "How can I get through the day and how can I get through the expectations attached to art and to artists: How can I get through those expectations without really respecting them, or partially respecting them and partially frustrating them. So it was an attitude that somehow was more internal to contemporary art. Initially it was also perceived, especially abroad, as a typically Italian attitude. He was playing the role of the lazy guy, the underachiever. And I think eventually he grew more conscious of the fact that he could reach out to a larger audience. So the desire to reach out to a larger audience went together with a form of irreverence against larger forms of authority.

G.J. So in your presentation, when you were talking about wanting to be just a lazy guy and not working, does Maurizio want to be seen as someone having successfully escaped work or does he want to be seen as an artist?

M.G. He never thinks of himself as an artist - he sees himself as an employer. Initially it was very much out of necessity, like not really knowing what being an artist was about. He had a whole series of odd jobs when he left home at 18 and he had no vocation and his first real relationship with art came out of his interest in furniture design. And then again even when he was designing, it was very much out of necessity. He had moved into this apartment and it was empty so he was designing furniture and some people saw it and got curious about it and eventually he started designing furniture for different firms based in Milan. He sort of fell into the art world from there. I think the reasons that attracted him to art were very practical: it was the mirage of a better wage with less effort, possibly. As I said, most of Cattelan's work is just problem solving. And the initial problem was how to avoid the specter of poverty, which is a theme that is always present in his work. And much of his work, with its confrontational attitude, has a lot to do with poverty, and with living for so long in an underdog position.

G.J. What was his life like before art?

M.G. Well, again it's often a matter of confusion. Mythology and confusion overlap, especially when you are dealing with his past. Anyway he lost his mother, when he was very young, and left home at 18, taking on a series of odd jobs.

G.J. We were talking about questioning authority with big figures like the Pope or Hitler, but could the work also be interpreted as dealing with issues of identity in the hiding, or hiding one's identity, like the series of animals hiding, the elephant, or the ostrich?

M.G. The whole point and the whole problem with each artwork of Cattelan's is that, when he is working, he never tries to concentrate on one single theme. The whole effort is actually about trying to make images that are complex enough to include both identity issues and power issues and many other themes and references. It sounds very mechanical when you describe it but part of his job is editing, choosing, taking away, so that the final image can possibly function on a series of different levels and meanings. That's why in his latest projects, like the pope or the little Hitler, there is always something quite deceiving, something that is deeply destabilized, both in scale and content. They always refuse a single interpretation and that reflects the idea of the artwork itself: to Cattelan art is not about taking a precise position or issuing a statement or delivering a message. It's about triggering different messages, and forcing the viewers to take different positions. So even the themes of invisibility and identity participate in this theatre of confusion and misinformation: you must try not to stand in the way of the art, otherwise your presence would just impose one single meaning, and that is going to kill the work. On the other hand, the hiding and the disappearing also have a lot to do with the issue of collaboration, which I believe is crucial to Cattelan's work. Many of his artworks talk about the way you can manage to produce something, without having any specific knowledge or training. Then again, you hide and disappear because you don't even deserve to be in the center, for there is no center: everything is dispersed and distributed. The production is often delegated, the manifacture is given out to professionals and craftsmen, the presentation is consigned to a spokesperson…

G.J. Does he see his artwork as collaboration?

M.G. He doesn't really see it as collaboration. Actually he doesn't really see it in any way. The problem is precisely how to stop yourself from seeing it. The deepest effort is to keep himself out of the work - to try to be as empty as possible, so that the meanings are bound to be the product of someone else. There is something detached in his work, something cold. Which I think comes from a strange ascetic practice: it's like interpreting the role of the underachiever, but taken to the extent of pure asceticism. And also the influence of advertising is another very interesting component in this drive to disappearance. Cattelan always had this attraction for advertising. For example, he makes this magazine called Permanent Food, which you cant even say is his own magazine, because it's made up of pages stolen from other magazines. Initially, the idea was to send out a letter to other artists, friends, and people he knew or admired and ask them to send pages they liked. So the final product was a magazine that was made of different personalities: there were so many personalities involved, that at the end the magazine itself didn't have a particular taste, and yet it had an individuality, made up with bits and pieces stolen elsewhere. I think from this experience and from his continual interest in advertising and commercial strategies he learned to work in teams and to find images that have a certain temperature which is not expressionistic: a sort of cold, passionless style. So again, it's more an exercise on how you keep yourself out of it and still come up with something interesting.

G.J. So do you think that it wouldn't matter to him what he was called, either an artist or something else, as long as he still felt he was dealing with life...

M.G. Images, with images that talk about certain aspects of life. That is a recurring issue in his work. And again, I think it is somehow related to commercials and ads - to the power that certain images have.

G.J. Going back to the power of certain images and relating that to what you were saying about commercials.... I personally find that a lot of the images are very shocking, that they would be meant to upset and distress a lot of people and I think that this also constitutes a demand for attention on the part of the artist.

M.G. Yes, the attention and the shock are there, but hopefully the work is not only about that. Personally I think that most of the best artworks - and I don't know if Cattelan's work belongs to the category of genuine masterpieces, but anyway - most masterpieces can never be reduced to a single interpretation. If I think of Warhol or Jeff Koons - I don't know if Maurizio is there yet, or if he will ever be - but if you think of their work, there is not one single position or ideology in each piece. The work is shocking but it's not only about the shock per se.

G.J. Totally, I feel that way.

M.G. Also it's about catching attention because Cattelan, as any artist today, has to measure up with different media that gain incredible attention at incredible speed. He's very conscious of the need for artworks to function beyond the limits of the art world. So, creating shocking images has something to do with that. Cattelan thinks a lot about how he can do something that can live outside the art world, that it's formal and can be appreciated by certain people in the know, while also being popular enough to be understood anywhere. Instead, if we want to do some cheap psychology, we could say that his shock tactics and attention seeking strategies have to do again with the idea of weakness: like some disturbed child, he goes from disappearing into the corner, to demanding all the attention for himself…

G.J. Yes, but I would like to expand on the relationship between the notion of calling attention to himself and your being here in his place.
M.G. Again, maybe it's something I'm reducing or taking too literally, but I think it has to do with certain strategies of marketing and commercialism. And moreover it's about trying to develop a certain level of confusion, which hopefully can generate new interests. It also has lots to do with boredom.

G.J. If we were always the same, it would get boring. This way we can exchange roles and personalities.

G.J. Do you think that this has to do with something more than an idea or just making a success in the art world, or simply avoiding publicity...

M.G. First of all, it's about necessity. If Maurizio had to do the talk himself, it would have been less entertaining: hopefully by playing around with roles you can frustrate expectations and create some excitement, some reaction, some anger or laughter. All of us have been to so many lectures by artists who are very good artists but when they explain the work you just want to shoot yourself. So I guess that these lectures I do instead of Maurizio have an element of confusion, but also one of generosity and entertainment. On one hand we have something that fulfills the expectation of the public and you want to have the public satisfied for 40 minutes and you want the public to have a good time and be happy and at the same time you want to frustrate it and so you hide and send someone else in. In that friction lies most of Cattelan's work: he often gives you what you expect, but he takes away something else.

G.J. You were saying in the lecture that Maurizio only sees the artwork in place a couple of days before the show, and often he hasn't seen it before at all. There seems to be so much thought involved in his work, both in the conception of the piece and in the thought it generates in its audience. Does he pay a lot of attention to the craft made for him?

M.G. Oh, yes. This brings up an aspect of his work that I was hoping to address during the lecture: it's the paradox of someone who is trying to avoid labor and work, but finds himself trapped into labor no matter what. Cattelan got into art to escape working, and now he finds himself working basically 20 hours a day. So there is a contrast between the idea of escaping one's own fate and then finding it reconfirmed in a different context. So he might see the piece very last minute, but the production process is very controlled: he delegates a lot, but he is always there in the background and often works with the same people who can check out the piece before it's finished, and give him feedback. In a way it's a killer's job - there are no traces. There are no marks, no evidence of a personal style. And yet everything is very controlled, down to the finest detail. Like in some criminal plan, you work out all the details in advance, but it's only when the action begins that you can really find out if your plan was right

G.J. Maybe for Cattelan the opening is when the action begins.

G.J. Do you think your presence here is a kind of performance?

M.G. No, not at all. A performance would have probably happened in a gallery and in a precise perimeter clearly related to art.

G.J. Don't you consider this like an art piece?

M.G. No, no. If it were an art piece it would be particularly lame. Also I don't like the idea of performance: it's such a Seventies term, which carries the image of a heroic artist. There is no heroism instead in the gesture of sending someone else in your place. Or if there is heroism it is a very pathetic version of it. I must say we thought of different ways to try and give an end to it, and eventually do a book with all the lectures and the interviews, but that's not our main concern. At the moment it's just about finding the easiest way to do something. And I guess it's also about the distribution of wealth...

G.J. Labor, you mean?

M.G. No, not just labor, but also wealth and information. Besides getting the money for the lectures I also gain exposure to the work of young artists, so I do studio visits and look around… So, one the hand I loose: I might lose my credibility and my respect - if I ever had any - because I'm just an alter ego; on the other I gain something else. As always, when Cattelan is around, it's a win win, and lose lose situation. I lose something, he wins and loses just as well. All this is to say that it's not about performing, it's about solving. That's why we also try to avoid any theatrical aspect. It could be much more fun or outrageous, but it would become something else.

G.J. Except that some things are considered, like when you came into the room.

M.G. Oh yes, I know, we do it at times with the lights off and, for instance, sometimes I start the lecture by asking, if it's a very small class, "Who do you think I am?" Maybe there's an element of performance but it's more about the everyday: it's about the performance of roles which every human plays everyday.

G.J. Do you find yourself mildly schizophrenic in terms of the role switch?

M.G. No, not at all. Sometimes it's tiring, especially when he shows some new piece and I have to do the interviews for something like a week in a row, and talk and talk. But there is no confusion: you always know who you are. Actually, to lie better, you really have to know yourself.

G.J. Do you talk about his work at all? Like your knowledge as a critic, does that interest him at all?

M.G. I'm actually very critical with him in a funny way - I always thought that the works that made him the most famous are the works I dislike, but that is just a question of taste I guess. I have also wrote some texts on him, as myself, as Massimiliano Gioni, which have been published in magazines or books, whatever. Some people might get upset because there is a conflict of interest, but I don't really care: I think you can play different roles and still be sincere enough within that particular role. Also, when you work as an editor, you soon learn that any interview in any magazine undergoes a process of editing, cutting, rewriting: the thing you read is never the same thing that the person said. Reality is constructed everyday, and everyday your identity is performed…

G.J. I'm surprised that you don't get extremely self-conscious. I don't mean in having nightmares that you are Maurizio, but that you are not aware of the power that you gain in terms of speaking, or don't you think of it that way?

M.G. No, not at all. Actually what I like about doing this is that maybe it's a funny way to neutralize power: both the power of the artist and that of the critic - if they have ever had any power, that is.

G.J. But, you get also to make up the interpretations of his work.

M.G. Yes, but you always try to make them up in such a way that someone reading it might think, Is this real?, or is this just too weird? Even when it's a written statement it has to have an unbalanced quality to it, so that you can't really take it too seriously. Or, if you do, you are taking a risk: you are taking the risk of believing in something.

G.J. Would you do this for anyone else?

M.G. I don't know, maybe. I never did it to this extent, but when you are working closely with different artists there are times when you find yourself articulating something that they can't really explain properly. After all, I guess that's the job of an art critic; you try to translate in words something that is already there in front of you. Of course, most of the time, the translation loses some of the original meaning. With Maurizio, it's now more direct and clear, and I can almost say whatever I want. With other artists I still have to discuss, negotiate, say this and that. But, you see, it's something that happens everyday, anywhere: the transcription of this discussion we are having now is never going to be what we said. Even if you transcribe it all, it's never going to have the quality, the speed, the spontaneity of a discussion. And if you wanted to give the feeling of an informal discussion, you would actually have to use some stylistic effects... The moment you put your hands on something you're bound to change it. With Maurizio this relationship is simply explicit, but it goes on everyday in information or art criticism.

G.J. Speaking of that, concerning a purely practical matter, do we send the transcription of this interview to you?

M.G. Yes, I'm not picky about what I say but it has to have a certain quality, finally.

G.J. Are you the only one editing the material or would Maurizio respond personally by email to questions?

M.G. On these issues there is no 'personally'. It's about a play between being anonymous and being 'him'. Many times when I do interviews I use someone else's statements, so I'm answering for Maurizio but I'm not using my own words or ideas but citing someone else's.

G.J. Recycling his ideas or others' about his work or reciting anybody's ideas about anything?

M.G. Anything that functions in that moment. Even through this discussion there are things I've said that are repetitions of things that other people have said about other artists or about his work.

G.J. I wanted to ask you something about living in New York. Why do both you and Maurizio live in New York?

M.G. He moved there in '93 or '94 and I think he had gone there before and he had felt this freedom and I guess he also thought that commercially it was a smart move. It was like a promotional tool: when he moved to the States, that generated more attention in Italy on his work. 'Oh, yes, he's gone to New York, he's really going to make it', that's what people probably thought. Of course, if he had failed everyone would have forgotten him. For a while, moving to NY gave him a momentum. But also I think it had to do with different issues. He often says that all of the works were somehow born in New York: they have a very New Yorkish scale. And he likes Manhattan, he uses it as a 24 hour a day office: you can look at magazines any time of the day, you can find basically anything in the trash, you can spend hours looking at people. Manhattan is a mess and it's expensive, and yet it's very accessible, very comfortable. I mean, it's an awful city but somehow it's more comfortable than any other city if you want to work all the time. You don't need a structure because there are lots of structures outside.

For me, it was pretty much a career decision. I did what I thought I could be doing in Italy up to a certain point and then I thought it would be better to go to New York. Italy is a sort of strange place. In a way, it's not different from New York, but the art world is much smaller and it's easy to lose the momentum after awhile.