So as not to offend, we have moved the image of the installation below the fold.
file this under the "Yes, darling, but is it Art?" category...
In May 2004, Italian sculptor Maurizio Cattelan hung three plastic "children" from the ancient oak in Piazza XXIV Maggio, Milan's oldest tree.
An (understandably) horrified viewer grabbed a ladder and attempted to free the dolls from their impending death. He had hacked through two of the dolls’ ropes before he slipped and fell. After the courts determined that the installation was in fact "art", the man was brought to court and has recently been condemned to pay 309 euro as a fine then to two months of imprisonment for having damaged two of the dolls (he will not actually spend the time in prison.)
(FROM W.M.M.N.A)
This is disgusting and disturbing on so many levels. I don't even think it should be posted on the internet, much less this site.
omg so agree...please take this off
I love it. All of it, the artiste, the "is it art", the sentencing of the the doll saver, and the fact it ended up on AT:LA. Witty, and thought provoking....and funny in a macabre way.
regards,
trillium
PS Viva Iiiiitalllieee.
*sigh*
These incidents are why self-labeled conservatives run around taking funding away from the arts in the United States.
I feel like launching into a Brooke-the-artsy-one lecture on why this installation strikes me as an obvious appropriation from cultural milestones such as Hardy's Jude the Obscure and the creepier forms of doll, but it doesn't really *provoke* me on an intellectual level. Alas, after my tiff with her during Art Month, it would read like a parody -- but I mean it. What's the message here? "Hanging children is icky"? "People are so busy with their cell phones that they'll walk right by hanging children"?
If art doesn't have to have meaning, just give me nice cowskin bunnies and back away slowly.
Catelan is hilarious. I worked at Christie's when they auctioned "La Nona Hora," which was a life-sized statue of Pope John Paul II being hit by a meteorite. He's just messing with people's heads and the fact that some people go for it like fish to bait makes it funnier.
A quote from the artist: "scandals are just incidents, side effects. I work with images trying to reflect realityÂ’s schizophrenia: who tries to impose its own interpretation to my work as the only possible makes the scandal." he says.