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拍品專文
'It's like spraying stardust over the Sicilian landscape: it's a cut and paste dream... I tried to overlap two opposite realities, Sicily and Hollywood: after all, images are just projections of desire, and I wanted to shade their boundaries. It might be a parody, but its also a tribute. It's like freezing the moment in which truth turns into hallucination. There is something hypnotic in Hollywood: it's a sign that immediately speaks about obsessions, failures and ambitions. It is a magnet for contradictions' (M. Cattelan quoted in 2001 in press release, reproduced at www.postmedia.net).
Executed in 2001, Hollywood is a photograph showing, and thus recording, one of Maurizio Cattelan's most celebrated and highlypublicised works of art. It was for the Venice Biennale that year that Cattelan, ever unpredictable, created Hollywood, in which he transposed a replica of the famous sign from Los Angeles to Palermo, in Sicily. This colossal installation comprised 500 tons of steel, concrete and iron and towered over 20 metres tall on its eyrie on the mountains above the city (see M. Gioni, 'Update', pp. 159-191, F. Bonami, N. Spector & B. Vanderlinden, Maurizio Cattelan, London, 2005, p. 183). Cattelan then brought a group of journalists and other guests from the comfort of the Biennale in Venice to the poverty of the South of Italy in order to see his handiwork; meanwhile, it remained there for some time, his wit writ large across the landscape which it dominated.
As is the case with so much of Cattelan's work, Hollywood managed to combine humour, irreverence and a solid moral compass. This vast sign exposed and mocked the mechanics of the art world and the art market, just as Cattelan had earlier done at the 1993 Biennale with Lavorare un brutto mestiere ('Working Is a Bad Job'), whereby he rented out his space in the Italian Pavillion to advertisers. In Hollywood, though, Cattelan also explored a social issue that remains a key point in Italian politics and economics: the discordance between the wealthy North and the primarily poor South, where figures for unemployment and crime are often far higher. Cattelan highlighted these iniquities by placing this ironic and incongruous sign, such an icon of glamour and wealth, above historic Palermo, formerly one of Europes most powerful cities yet now featuring much poverty.
Cattelan's intervention had a positive side: he was bringing that very same glamour to Palermo, allowing it to bask a little in the glow of Hollywood, which after all is based on an industry that has made countless millions of dollars by exploiting tales of the Sicilian mafia.
Executed in 2001, Hollywood is a photograph showing, and thus recording, one of Maurizio Cattelan's most celebrated and highlypublicised works of art. It was for the Venice Biennale that year that Cattelan, ever unpredictable, created Hollywood, in which he transposed a replica of the famous sign from Los Angeles to Palermo, in Sicily. This colossal installation comprised 500 tons of steel, concrete and iron and towered over 20 metres tall on its eyrie on the mountains above the city (see M. Gioni, 'Update', pp. 159-191, F. Bonami, N. Spector & B. Vanderlinden, Maurizio Cattelan, London, 2005, p. 183). Cattelan then brought a group of journalists and other guests from the comfort of the Biennale in Venice to the poverty of the South of Italy in order to see his handiwork; meanwhile, it remained there for some time, his wit writ large across the landscape which it dominated.
As is the case with so much of Cattelan's work, Hollywood managed to combine humour, irreverence and a solid moral compass. This vast sign exposed and mocked the mechanics of the art world and the art market, just as Cattelan had earlier done at the 1993 Biennale with Lavorare un brutto mestiere ('Working Is a Bad Job'), whereby he rented out his space in the Italian Pavillion to advertisers. In Hollywood, though, Cattelan also explored a social issue that remains a key point in Italian politics and economics: the discordance between the wealthy North and the primarily poor South, where figures for unemployment and crime are often far higher. Cattelan highlighted these iniquities by placing this ironic and incongruous sign, such an icon of glamour and wealth, above historic Palermo, formerly one of Europes most powerful cities yet now featuring much poverty.
Cattelan's intervention had a positive side: he was bringing that very same glamour to Palermo, allowing it to bask a little in the glow of Hollywood, which after all is based on an industry that has made countless millions of dollars by exploiting tales of the Sicilian mafia.