Who Killed Cattelan, 2007
Olio su tela
Firmato, monogrammato e numerato 534 al retro
Oil on canvas
Signed, monogrammed and numbered 534 on the back
130 x 97 cm
The David with the head of Goliath that Caravaggio made at the beginning of the 16th century is one of the most intense and dramatic interpretations of the famous episode of the Bible (...). The general opinion is that the Goliath should be seen as a self-portrait of Caravaggio, a representation of himself in the condition of the victim. On the sword, the inscription "H.AS O S" takes up the Augustinian motto humilitas occidit superbiam and it is indeed according to the reflection of Saint
Augustine that the David with the head of Goliath should be read: Caravaggio, guilty of the crime of Ranuccio Tomassoni, represents himself in the severed head of
Goliath as a sinner, as if the death penalty had already been carried out. The merciful gaze of his avenger is the Christological gaze of compassion and forgiveness, the one that Caravaggio hoped to receive from the Church. This introduction is essential to understand the meaning of the painting WHO KILLED CATTELAN, the operation that David Dalla Venezia carried out in conjunction with the 52nd Venice Biennale. The author, who portrays himself holding the severed head of Maurizio Cattelan, starts from the quotation of David with the head of Caravaggio's Goliath, but unlike Caravaggio he does not represent himself in the role of the executed sinner, but of the vigilante (...). Around the painting (...) David Dalla Venezia gives concrete expression to his reflections on contemporary artistic production (...) and makes the dialectical opposition between two divergent systems of artistic production converge in the pictorial space. The system that is recognised and represented in events such as the Biennale (Goliath/Cattelan) and the system that exists by virtue of its opposition to the latter (David/David Dalla Venezia). Caravaggio is (...) the artist who produces the work by means of the
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