“One of the most audacious exhibitions in the Guggenheim’s half-century”—so reads the subway advertisement for “Maurizio Cattelan: All,” an exhibition organized by Nancy Spector, the museum’s Deputy Director and Chief Curator, along with the Associate Curator Katherine Brinson. The quote is from a New York Times profile of the artist by Randy Kennedy. We shouldn’t necessarily expect critical insights from a puff piece, but even an arts journalist like Kennedy must know the bad faith he’s peddling. The most striking thing about the Cattelan exhibition is, after all, its lack of audacity. Nothing daring can be generated by an artist whose sole and defining impetus is playing to the audience.
By “audience” I don’t refer only to that vexing creature known as the “art world”—the denizens of which are schooled, to one degree or another, in its vagaries. I also include men and women who don’t rely on the latest edition of Artforum for intellectual enlightenment—curiosity seekers whose range of interests are broader, or different, than any one subculture will allow. (Some of them may not even care about art.) Even so, Cattelan will likely strike people as par for the course. We’ve reached a stage in world culture where artists are expected to be, you know, out there. When one or another doesn’t occasion a splash, it can be kind of disappointing. Art, as the sage Andy Warhol reputedly had it, is what you can get away with.
The artist as con-man and provocateur—it’s