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#129 Maurizio Cattelan, Be Right Back (2016)

Director: Maura Axelrod

American

If you are angered or disgusted at the ludicrous prices fetched at auction by contemporary art, don’t watch this film. Every suspicion you had about the esoteric commercial mechanism of the contemporary art world will probably be confirmed within the time frame of this documentary. If you wish there were more artists that would poke fun and play games at the pretentiousness of this very system –this will be a rewarding view.

Here’s the spoiler. The artist, Maurizio Cattelan is still going to make some money, but the subversive way he goes about this is quite entertaining. If any number of the Dadaists were alive today, I think they would have loved all this. In fact, most of the strategies and pranks utilized by Cattelan were already in place in some form by the likes of Marcel Duchamp. By the time he further immersed himself in playing chess, Duchamp had a somewhat detached relationship to the esoteric and financial mechanisms of the art world of his time. He had his benefactors, but for the most part, Duchamp seems to have exercised the freedom to pursue his concepts without having to maintain the professional annoyance of branding. Yes, it was a different time to be sure.

If you are of the stripe that hates to see art sullied by the arcane and ugly forces of the marketplace, that’s ok, but art has moved on from the solitary and the puritanical a long time ago. The numbers bear out a sobering reality, or perhaps an econimc bubble. When you have an American economy in a slump, and simultaneously see record investing in contemporary art, that’s your signal that capitalism has appropriated art. The artists want to believe it’s the other way around, that they are the ones that can freely utilize the art market on their own terms, but at some point that assumption turns into a blatant fallacy. I think that point is somewhere around the 1 million dollar mark, or a convenient entry level auction bidding price. This number used to be lower, but when works get into these stratospheric numbers, what happens inside and outside the artist’s studio seems to escape the artist’s control, and larger monetary forces take over.

Enter Maurizio Cattelan, an artist convinced of his own laziness, but seems to have worked quite dilligently to insert himself into the looking glass world of contemporary art. This film does a good job of not keeping certain secrets. It exposes the rather clandestine and serendipitous roadmap of Cattelan’s career. I use the word “career”, because to talk about Cattelan’s work and ideas is to have to engage the flowchart of his career as an artist, whose core idea is to make a career in the world of contemporary art. Not a new idea mind you, but Cattelan seems to have a great deal of skill and the wherewithal to at least take the direct approach of using those people and situations that could further this ambition. Here’s where Cattelan leaves subversive, dadaist tendencies to the side and fully embraces the artistic / commercial path laid down by Andy Warhol.

For example, any interview question with Warhol was to be provided with his demurely opaque answers. This seemingly naive dismissivness or aloofness left the media frustrated, and in an ironic twist, seemed to stoke even more media curiosity. Couple this with the fact that Warhol also knew how to instigate a scandal and a spectacle. Like it or not, this was the first real step into contemporary cultural stardom, and the precise point where fellow artists and sections of the public began to cry foul. Hard enough to sway the public over to the squalor of Abstract Expressionism, but when Brillo Boxes and consumer goods began to be hoisted onto museum walls and fetch higher and higher sale prices, integrity had to be recalibrated. Just like that, contemporary art’s kiss and tell relationship with deep pocket consumerists was already underway.

In many ways, the film shows Cattelan picking up where Warhol left off. The inauguration of big money and young controversial artists became institutionalized in the 1980’s. Since then, the art world after postmodernism has been defined more about the financial momentum it can create, rather than defending some new aesthetic territory. It was now ok for art to be a product, a brand, an idea, and a risky form of capital exchange, all at the same time. It could now function freely in the realm of obscure commodity. It could be proposed as a purely financial transaction, one that was immune to, or the beneficiary of, scandal or authenticity. Have someone fabricate an unsettling little sculpture of Adolf Hitler – guaranteed to set off a storm of ridicule and controversy. A stunt like that should be professional suicide. Instead – someone’s not only going to buy it –it’s going to set a record price. The artist need only market the controversy in the right way, and what would otherwise be condemned or censored, is now a cornerstone for a delicately curated brand. I find all this terribly fascinating

However, I still like art that avoids all this fuss and wrestles with looming existential considerations, of our time, but that’s not the complete picture anymore, maybe not even the most interesting part. The enlightenment has happened, and the numbers are coming in. At this time in history, there’s a party raging for the 1 percenters, and art has been invited to the party. Art is going to show up to the party and piss in the punch bowl. Oh sure, people will recoil in horror at the vile act, but secretly, it was bat shit crazy. Count on the spectacle going viral, and with enough attention, magic happens. That punchbowl, just like R Mutt’s urinal, will have made its way into the perverse economy of the spectacle. We may not even have to call it art anymore, we can simply be in some sort of awe at the escalating transactions taking place. Someone’s going to make a killing, probably the dealer / artist first, then the collector, and like Warhol said: “Making money is the best kind of art.”

A good, and thought provoking documentary.

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