Maurizio Cattelan: All

The Guggenheim Museum’s sold-out publication Maurizio Cattelan: All is returning to print. Hailed as a provocateur, prankster and tragic poet of our times, Maurizio Cattelan (born 1960, Padua, Italy) has created some of the most unforgettable images in contemporary art – most notoriously `The Ninth Hour’ (1999), a sculpture of Pope John Paul II struck by a meteorite. Derived from popular culture, history and organized religion, Cattelan’s subjects range widely, and his work, while bold and irreverent, is deadly serious in its scathing cultural critiques. The second edition of All updates the catalogue that accompanied the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum’s 2011–12 retrospective survey of the artist. For this exhibition, Cattelan sidestepped the totalizing effect of a retrospective by devising a site-specific installation in which his entire oeuvre was suspended from the oculus of the museum’s iconic rotunda. This book offers an equally unique response to the conventions of the catalogue. It is a faux-leather-bound hardcover with gold stamping and thin paper that is designed to resemble an old textbook or bible. The volume details almost every work of Cattelan’s from the late 1980s to the present within a double-column page format, featuring full-colour reproductions and accompanying entries. The revised edition describes the artist’s return to art making after a five-year `retirement’ with a special, ongoing project opening at the Guggenheim in May 2016. It also features a redesigned cover and installation images of the exhibition All. Nancy Spector has augmented her critical overview of Cattelan – which documents not only his artistic output but also his ongoing activities as a curator, editor and publisher – with a new coda. Since its original publication, All has become the Cattelan bible, and this revised edition exploring the latest chapter of the artist’s influential career ensures it will remain the definitive source on his work for years to come.