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PROPERTY from a private belgian collector MAURIZIO CATTELAN (b. 1960) UNTITLED dog skeleton and L...

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PROPERTY from a private belgian collector MAURIZIO CATTELAN (b. 1960) UNTITLED dog skeleton and L...
PROPERTY from a private belgian collector
MAURIZIO CATTELAN
(b. 1960)
UNTITLED
dog skeleton and
Le Monde newspaper
28 x 15 x 143/4 in.
(71.1 x 38.1 x 37.5 cm)
executed in 1997
this work is unique in three versions
ESTIMATE: $200,000-300,000

PROVENANCE
Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin, PARIS
Since 1994, when Maurizio Cattelan featured a live donkey in his first one-man show in New York, animals have remained a recurring motif in the artist's work. Following this debut, Cattelan began using taxidermized animals as sculptural objects. Exercising greater control over their poses and placement, the artist arranged these frozen creatures in gallery and museum settings, and thereby generated unexpected encounters with the animal kingdom. Cattelan's sculpture, UNTiTlED, 1997, represents a significant advance within this body of Cattelan's work. Now stripped to the bone, the skeletal form dispenses with the lifelike illusionism of taxidermy, as this sculpture features the skeleton of a dog, in whose mouth is clutched a copy of a Le Monde newspaper. Cattelan artfully transforms what could have been a seeming macabre appearance into a humorous and kitsch affirmation of life as the dog skeleton in UNTITLED features man's best friend preserved for all eternity in its daily duty to fetch its owner's newspaper. Thus, in its marriage of humor, irony and the bizarre, Cattelan's UNTITLED is a work that incorporates everything that pervades the artist's artwork and life.
Proceeds from the sale of this lot will be donated to benefit
the Belgian Kids Foundation for pediatric research