Maurizio Cattelan

“Never give an artist like me carte blanche: he would think it's simply toilet paper.”

“Art should be able to be innovative without compromising itself. That's why I believe artists should have bigger preoccupations than checking the price tags on their work or becoming curator...”

“Based on my experience, it's considerably difficult to force a donkey into doing something it perceives to be dangerous for whatever reason.”

“Art fairs are a lot like professional proms - you make contacts, have a lot to look at, and in some cases, you make friends forever. I think that for artists, they can be a bit controversial...”

“Contemporary art will never achieve the audience of football, pop music, or television, so I think we should stop comparing its possible area of influence to that of big mass-media events.”

“Every morning, we choose between milk or tea or coffee. Usually, I know what I like, but I don't rule out changing my idea sometimes. The editing process is one of the most important parts i...”

“When I was very young, I had to start to working to help my family, while my friends were studying. Since then, I have felt the urgency to escape from every dependency situation.”

“Laughter is a Trojan horse to enter into direct contact with the unconscious, strike the imagination, and trigger visceral reactions.”

“I am fascinated by the idea of employing beautiful images as a device to convey something extremely disturbing in an apparently harmless way.”

“I get up in the morning and get to bed at night, and between, I bring equivalent dedication to everything I do, with a horror of the inaccurate and the half-baked.”

“I would describe myself as a tallish, shy, middle-aged man who equally loves his work and his freedom. And a good liar!”

“Made in Catteland is a project that aims to overcome the boundaries of the work of art as we're used to thinking of it: exploring new possibilities of reaching the audience through the creat...”

“Truth is so hard to tell, it sometimes needs fiction to make it plausible.”

“Art is about forgetting all these feelings, good and bad, and trying to understand what acts will last longer, which symbols will remain in history. It's a question of perspective: The furth...”

“If you are a plumber, there is an objective way to establish whether you put together a great piping system or not. Art is a bit more slippery than that.”

“I don't like the idea of having a public image. In the end, you have an image of someone, which becomes true whether it is or not.”

“I think that laughter and death are closely related: comedy is the quintessential human reaction to the fear of death. It's probably linked with the fact that we are the only animals who kno...”

“There are times when being scandalous or provocative can help bring focus to issues of major concern.”