Maurizio Cattelan Takes the Piss Out of the Art World

The artist Maurizio Cattelan loves to play, and he especially loves playing God. There was his smiting of Pope John Paul II in the hyperrealistic 1999 sculpture La Nona Ora in which a meteorite crushes His Holiness. (Miracle of miracles: This did not prevent the Vatican from asking Cattelan to front its pavilion at the Venice Biennale this year.) There was his resurrection of Hitler in 2001 with his child-size, praying sculpture of the Führer, Him. And then there was Cattelan’s own resurrection in 2016...