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This biography from the Archives of AskART:
| Please note: Artists not classified as American in our database may have limited biographical data
compared to the extensive information about American artists.
 A self-taught artist assertive of 'bad aesthetic taste', Maurizio
Cattelan creates work underpinned by humor with "slight shifts of
reality" and a teasing of the art world "without ever falling into the
naive trap of thinking he can subvert a system of which he is
part." For instance, at his urging, Emmanuel Perrotin, his
gallery representative in Paris, dressed for a month as a gigantic pink
phallus.
Cattelan was born in Padua, Italy and works from a studio in
Milan. In 1998, coinciding with a Jackson Pollock exhibition at
the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Cattelan, with the Museum's
permission, hired an actor to greet visitors in a Picasso look-alike
mask. The underlying idea was to create a Walt-Disney type
character, which many visitors assumed was a 'pretend' Pollock.
Another 'spoof', one which characteristically walked a fine line
between vulgar and humor, was a 1999 London gallery exhibition where
the main feature was a black marble slab that was a copy of Maya Lin's
Vietnam Memorial in Washington DC. However, instead of the names
of people who had lost their lives, it was a "neatly engraved" listing
of scores of all the defeats suffered by the national football team of
England.
In fact, the Vietnam War and football are recurring themes. In
his paintings, he features his own football team, "A.C. Forniture Sud",
which in English translation is A.C. Furniture Supplies.
Source:
http://www.eyestorm.com/feature/ED2n_article.asp?article_id=32&artist_id=95
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