Art and representation – Maurizio Cattelan

Maurizio Cattelan, Novecento,1997, 

taxidermy horse, metal frame, leather slings, rope 

Collection Castello di Rivoli Museo d'Arte Contemporanea, 

Rivoli-Turin; Gift Amici Sostenitori del Castello di Rivoli.

Last years Biennale of Sydney was fantastic, wasn’t it? Absolutely brimming with exciting contemporary art. I was lucky enough during the period it was showing in 2008 to visit many of the venues. My favourite artwork was – literally – held at the Museum of Contemporary Art, and that artwork was Maurizio Cattelan’s Novecento. The artwork proved to be quite a controversial piece; constantly being referred to in the media, with mixed reviews.

I feel that Novecento relates to this weeks topic of representation, because the meaning of the work does not expose itself until you research it further.

“…This work makes reference to the 1976 film 1900 (pronounced Novecento in Italian) in which director Bernardo Bertolucci explores Italy’s painful passage to modernity. As in the film, which presents fascism and communism in opposition, Cattelan expresses a sense of blocked energy. A saddled horse is a means of transportation and mobility; here it is rendered immobile. His work is a eulogy for the end of the great revolutionary impulses that characterised the twentieth century.”*

* http://www.bos2008.com/app/biennale/artist/61

I had no idea of the representative element of the artwork until I looked into it, after viewing it. This, I am happy to say, still did not take away any of the awe and pleasure I experienced seeing the artwork. Before reading up on the artwork, I did think that it was representative of lost freedom, freedom being the horse, and lost being its death and the hanging.

This artwork stirred me emotionally. The eye’s were so sad…

Local Abstraction - The Twilight Girls

The Twilight Girls are a collaborative pair of female artists based in Sydney; Helen Hyatt-Johnston and Jane Polkinghorne. In August-September 2008, they exhibited their work World Wide Web at the ICAN in Sydney; a literal web of strung sticky matter (not quite sure what the actual substance is) enveloping an entire room of the gallery.

Reviewing the work in Eyeline, Adam Geczy (who I only just realised wrote the article) suggested that "When physically within the space, one became aware of the instability of the structure which, in its chaos, and it's cluttered riotous formlessness, stretched to every limit of the space." Both the conceptual abstraction of the title and the abstraction of the form itself (independent of the title) implies innumerable meanings and interpretations of the work; from the detrimental usage of the Internet to my favourite suggestion of Geczy's: "a vast quasi abattoir set up by a pair of female predators".

On a totally different note; Eleanor's post got me thinking about pigs and animals in art and I thought of that guy who tattoos pigs (Wim Delvoye), so I visited his website http://www.wimdelvoye.be/ It's a pretty cute layout - worth checking out.