Where's Geppetto when you need him?

Maurizio Cattelan is known in the contemporary art world as a joker. He is seriously whimsical and thrashes back at his mentors (aforesaid art world) by hanging taxidermy horses and a lot of other junk) from rotundas in fancy places. He is really best known for a piece called “La Noma Ora” which has Pope John Paul II, in full pontifical garb, flattened by a meteor. I like his stuff because he’s such a goof, thumbing his nose at society and its pretensions (of all kinds).


However this piece, called “Daddy Daddy” made me feel unsettled in a way; it’s hard to describe my brain-function looking at it. Probably it’s because of the propaganda foisted on my childhood; the Disneyfication of my distant (and sometimes not so distant) past that doesn’t want sacred fantasies sullied in any way. Everything is supposed to work out in the end, doncha know.


“Daddy Daddy” is floating face done in a large boat-shaped pool of water…wouldn’t you say lifeless? Discombobulating but mesmerizing. Even the title of the work is dark and full of meaning. Jeez, I hope Mr. Cattelan is just joking.