I'm criticizing the way they are perceived. I was going through a book of Marina Abramovic and Ulay's 1970s performance work the other day. These people did two, even three Documentas or Venice Biennales over the course of a decade without any fuss. They would just treat it as any of their other engagements, with the same level of dignity and commitment they'd reserve for a one-day event in a small gallery on the Austrian mountains.
Maurizio CattelanI do not know exactly why, but it seems to me that images do not belong to anybody but are instead there, at the disposal of all.
Maurizio CattelanPart of the blame can be put at the artists' door, too - no question. But I see our involvement more as a consequence. When there is too much money at stake, the whole system gets corrupted. Artists can be very vulnerable to these mechanisms.
Maurizio CattelanI'm not saying the 1970s was a golden age - I don't believe such a thing exists in art . . . It would be like talking about a golden age of science. But it's true that those were slightly more ideological times, and the relevance of artists wasn't established by their CVs but by their work.
Maurizio CattelanThe market is like a machine that needs to be constantly excited. It needs to constantly produce wealth and more excitement. There are some leading players who are always there before everyone else, and they set market trends, they make people safe about the excitement. Of course, those who buy it first are the first to drop it. It's an ongoing game.
Maurizio Cattelan