The Person as Product: Maurizio Cattelan

Isabelle Graw - The Person as Product: Maurizio Cattelan

We cordially invite you to a presentation by art historian and critic Isabelle Graw about Maurizio Cattelan and the figure of the artist as a product.

The presentation will be held in English.

Maurizio Cattelan's objects usually served as representatives for one person — often for the artist himself. Many of his works could therefore be characterized as more or less veiled self-portraits.

In this presentation, I will show how exactly liveliness is indicated in objects that are at the same time visibly inanimate. I will also examine how the revival of these otherwise inanimate objects points to the specific form of value of the work of art.

In my opinion — and in contrast to ordinary goods — works of art are able to give the impression that they are enriched with the life of their absent creator. This suggestion, characteristic of works of art, seems to be taken to extremes in Cattelan's oeuvre. At the same time, however, life remains hidden and withdrawn from his work, making it fascinating and attractive.

Finally, I will explain that it became (seemingly) easy to understand and therefore popular precisely because of the highly personalized character of his work and its allusion to existential questions of life and death.

Isabelle Graw (Berlin) is a professor of art history and art theory at the State University of Fine Arts (Städelschule) in Frankfurt am Main. Together with Stefan Germer (†), she founded the magazine *Texte zur Kunst* in 1990 and has co-designed and designed 141 issues to date. In 2003, together with Daniel Birnbaum, she founded the Institute for Art Criticism at the Städelschule.

Current research topics: The value of art, friendship in dark times, judgment and value creation under new forms of capitalism, traces and agency in painting.

Her publications include: The Better Half. Women artists of the 20th and 21st century (2003)

The big prize. Art between market and celebrity culture (2008)

High price. Art Between The Market and Celebrity Culture (2010)

Texts about art. Essays, reviews, talks (2011)

Where Are We Now? (2015)

The love of painting. Genealogy of a special position (2017)

The Love of Painting. Genealogy of a Success-Medium (2018)

In Another World. Notes 2014-2017 (2020)

Three Cases of Value Reflection Ponge, Whitten, Banksy (2020)

On The Benefits of Friendship (2023)

Fear And Money (2025)