Hollywood

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Hollywood

2001
Photographs
Dye coupler print
Framed: 69 5/8 x 157 3/4 x 3 1/4 in. (176.85 x 400.69 x 8.26 cm)
Gift of William J. Bell (M.2007.117)
Not currently on public view

Curator Notes

Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan combines elements of surrealism, performance, and satire in his oeuvre, and he is often referred to as a prankster or provocateur....
Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan combines elements of surrealism, performance, and satire in his oeuvre, and he is often referred to as a prankster or provocateur. For the 40th Venice Biennale in 2001, Cattelan erected a larger-than-life replica of the iconic Hollywood sign over the largest city dump in Palermo, Sicily; it was the first time in its history that the Biennale allowed a work to be presented outside Venice.Hollywood engaged the entire city by casting ordinary citizens in the role of film extras. Cattelan has said of this piece: "I tried to overlap two opposite realities, Sicily and Hollywood: after all, images are just projections of desire, and I wanted to shade their boundaries. It might be a parody, but it's also a tribute.... There is something hypnotic in Hollywood: it's a sign that immediately speaks about obsessions, failures, and ambitions." This photograph of Cattelan's installation joins another work by the artist, Untitled (2001), a semi-operational miniature replica of an elevator acquired by LACMA in 2003.
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