The coming star — Faultline

Plastic self-portrait of Maurizio Catellan. Installation at the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, 2009

“The whole of Berlin is sick about the awarding of the Neue Nationalgalerie Prize to Maurizio Cattelan,” said a commentary in the art magazine Monopol in November 2025 after the announcement of the upcoming prize winner. The reason for the outrage is the complete reorientation of the prize sponsored by the Friends of the National Gallery, which made it possible to honor an artist like Cattelan who is so established in the art market. New exhibition location, new concept: While young artists living in Germany, i.e. under 40 years of age, were previously honored every two years, the prize, as the press release on the award states, “enters a new phase with the move to the Neue Nationalgalerie.” The prize is no longer committed to promoting young talent; the goal is now to offer “a defining voice of international contemporary art” the opportunity to “realize a focused and ambitious exhibition in the iconic Glass Hall.”

In place of the joint shortlist show with competing artistic positions, which previously took place at Hamburger Bahnhof with the works of four nominees each, there is now a solo exhibition that is primarily intended to generate attention and international appeal - for the artist and the institution.

Cattelan has had substitutes appear in his place several times because, on the one hand, he has a “phobia of awards” but, on the other hand, he would find it impolite to cancel.

According to critics, the conceptual artist Maurizio Cattelan, born in Padua in 1960, has received enough, if not more, of both during his career - for example, for a banana taped to the wall of an art fair under the title "Comedian", an installation that fetched a price of 6.2 million dollars at auction. His Hitler sculpture “Him” brought in $17.2 million. It will also be on display in the Neue Nationalgalerie.

For years, Cattelan was seen primarily as a provocateur and court jester in the art world. He also has a complicated relationship with awards and recognitions: he has had substitutes appear in his place several times because, as he said in various interviews, on the one hand he has an “award phobia” but on the other hand he would find it impolite to cancel.

Georg Seeßlen, who published his new book »Cattelan! A Journey to Art, Comedy and Criticism", summarizes the debate as follows: "There are apparently few contemporary artists who were as resented as they were for making it. The award of the National Gallery Prize and the organization of a major exhibition in 2026 angered German art critics, especially because this prize was not awarded to young artists, as was actually expected, but to someone who was, well, "established". Suddenly someone like Maurizio Cattelan seems to be a brake on the art world. And he himself has nothing else to say about it other than: 'Success is just a failure that has forgotten to stop.'"

In a 400-page book, Seeßlen explains why he has come this far, where it will perhaps lead and whether Maurizio Cattelan's art is great or whether it can "go away" sooner or later. His method: "In this book I set up a few mirrors around Maurizio Cattelan's works of art to see which ideas look back. And I set up some mirrors around ideas and let artwork by Maurizio Cattelan look back. Let's see what comes of it. In between there is of course a lot to tell. About Cattelan, about Italy, about art and its history, about fascism and the possibility of a culture that speaks against it.

Seeßlen asks whether art can still be considered subversive or point beyond the all-determining spectacle in times in which openly displayed infamy plays an ever greater role in the actions of the ruling - and art-buying and defining - classes and their followers.

This turns out to be a thoroughly enjoyable read, with Seeßlen often taking detours full of narrative urges. Inspired by the situationist concept of wandering, he approaches his subject from many directions and not only delivers an artist portrait embedded in family, art and art refusal histories, in which diverse types of appearance, disappearance and return play an important role. Along the way, he also creates a short history of the connection between art, irony and comedy, looks at how art and the art market are related, and examines what role criticism plays in all of this. And he asks, even more generally, whether art can still be considered subversive or point beyond the all-determining spectacle in times in which openly displayed baseness plays an ever greater role in the actions of the ruling - and art-buying and defining - classes and their followers.

As usual, he has a lot planned and at the same time wrote a very personal book. Last but not least, it is about his “very personal encounter with the visual world of his own artist,” who some “consider to be one of the most important of our time.”

From Caravaggio, who was the first to break with the harmonious calm of Renaissance art and made people shudder with his pictures, to Dadaism and the “arts of refusal” that followed it, Seeßlen outlines the genealogy of Cattelan's art. He names Art brut, the Italian Arte Povera and Transavanguardia as important direct predecessors, whose representatives share neither a conviction nor a code, but as isolated individuals react with distorted and encoded figurations to the rubble of the great social narratives that the general turn to spectacle in art has left behind.

“The fear of disappearance is as universal today as the fear of the plague once was,” summarizes Seeßlen. »Maurizio Cattelan's happy, albeit melancholic laughter is the overcoming of the fear of disappearance and the simultaneous recognition of its reality.«

He makes it clear that many of the artist's works, which can initially be read as simple jokes, despite their catchiness, regularly raise new questions upon closer inspection. On the one hand, the works are tied to the places and their history for which they were conceived, such as the giant Stinky Finger ("L.O.V.E.") made of Carrara marble in the heart of Milan's financial center. On the other hand, Cattelan often takes up ideas that have already been realized and places them in completely different contexts in which they have a new impact.

In addition, the traces and very own stories of Cattelan's works always point beyond the art world. The sculpture of Pope John Paul II, who was struck down by a meteorite, entitled “La Nona Ora,” caused turmoil at an art show in Poland. In 2000, she was attacked and symbolically cleansed by two Polish Sejm MPs in what they described as a “heroic act” (the two had tried to remove the stone and raise the figure); the gallery owner who dared to exhibit them was fired. Cattelan's sculpture "America", a golden toilet, which was initially shown in New York's Guggenheim Museum in 2016 and could also be used by visitors there, was stolen one night during its presentation at the British Blenheim Palace in 2019.

The first major solo exhibition in Germany with the title “Night” will now be about changing perceptions of people who have long been known. It will show “important historical works by Cattelan” but also new works tailored to the location. According to the National Gallery, with the exhibition the artist is returning to a city whose art landscape he shaped through the Biennale, which he co-curated in 2006. If he comes in person as announced and doesn't send a representative.

Maurizio Cattelan's exhibition "Night" can be seen in Berlin's Neue Nationalgalerie from September 10, 2026 to March 7, 2027.

Georg Seeßlen: Cattelan! A journey to art, comedy and criticism. Verlag Martin Schmitz, Berlin 2026. 420 pages, 30 euros