meet the great blasphemer of contemporary art
When Maurizio Cattelan was invited to participate in the Vatican pavilion at the 60th Venice Biennale this year, he says, he was "the first to be surprised." At 63, the Italian still has a reputation as the great blasphemer of contemporary art, whose biting conceptual work has often caused a stir in the Catholic Church.
One of his best-known sculptural scenes of hyper-realistic effigies and stuffed animals features a wax statue of Pope John Paul II crushed by a meteorite. "Sacrilege!" shouted ...