The japester Maurizio Cattelan has apparently thrown some light on his most famous works in an updated version of his “autobiography”, written by the curator Francesco Bonami. In Stuck: Maurizio Cattelan: The Unauthorized Autobiography, “Cattelan” discusses his infamous golden toilet, America (2016), which was stolen from Blenheim Palace in 2019 in a daring heist: “Artists do things that haunt them forever. America…is one of those things.” The author adds cryptically: “[There is] the banality of shitting in gold or turning shit into gold.”
On Cattelan’s famous duct-taped banana, titled Comedian (2019), he says: “I saw the banana and knew I wanted it to be a work of art… I invented an alternative reality… it’s like a party I organised in a home I own but I don’t have the keys to open the door.” Who knows, though, if these insights really come from the enigmatic Cattelan? “This book makes me say things against my will,” he allegedly concludes. It all sounds a bit bananas to us.