Maurizio Cattelan: All

Hailed simultaneously as a provocateur, prankster and tragic poet of our times, Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan has created some of the most unforgettable images in recent contemporary art most notoriously with "The Ninth Hour", his 1999 sculpture of Pope John Paul II struck by a meteorite. Cattelans subjects range widely, being derived from popular culture, history and organized religion; while bold and irreverent, the work is also deadly serious in its scathing cultural critique. "Maurizio Cattelan: All" accompanies the Guggenheim Museums retrospective survey of the artist. For the exhibition, the museum has devised a site-specific installation intended to sidestep the totalizing effect of a retrospective, and for this catalogue the museum has produced an equally unique response to this dilemma and to the conventions of the catalogue format. "All" is a leather-bound hardcover with gold stamping and thin paper that is designed to resemble an old textbook or bible. This volume catalogues every work of Cattelans from the late 1980s to the present within a doublecolumn page format, reproducing them in full colour, with accompanying texts by various authors. One of the wittiest and most beautiful art books of recent years, "All" includes a detailed critical overview by Nancy Spector, documenting not only Cattelans artistic output but also his ongoing activities as a curator, editor and publisher, plus a comprehensive exhibition history and bibliography. Needless to say, "All" is indeed the definitive Cattelan bible.