Maurizio Cattelan's Strategic Retreat from the Museum

Roberto Ago's critical analysis of Maurizio Cattelan's career argues that the artist's 2011 work "All"—a fire extinguisher—was not a retirement but a strategic move to evade institutional capture. Ago contends that Cattelan's post-2011 works, including "America" (2016) and "Made in Catteland" (2017), deliberately occupy liminal spaces like the bookstore and toilet at the Guggenheim, rejecting traditional exhibition areas. The text frames Cattelan as a seismograph of the contemporary art system, whose ambivalence toward museums reflects a broader crisis: the inability of art institutions to sustain desire and surprise. Ago identifies three components of this crisis: ubiquity ("dappertutto"), permanence ("sempre"), and solitude ("solitudine"), linking them to a sacrificial logic inherited from ancient rituals. He contrasts Cattelan with other artists like Kris Martin and Jeremy Deller, praising Martin's subtle dislocation of a altarpiece while critiquing Deller's inflated Stonehenge replica. Ago concludes that the current artistic climate, marked by mannerism and consumerism, requires a hermeneutic approach rather than Dionysian spectacle.