What is Art? Maurizio Cattelan

Maurizio Cattelan is an Italian artist with very controversial artwork, however all his pieces have been sold for over $1 billion. His personal art practice has gained him a reputation as an art scene joker as all his works have a humorous twist. He is well known for his sculpture of Pope John Paul II in full ceremonial costume being crushed by a meteor. Cattelan specializes in taxidermy and sculpting. However he is very unusual to other artists as he doesn't create any of his work, he only provides the ideas. His art makes fun of various systems of order and h often utilizes themes and motifs from art of the past and other cultural sectors in order to get his point across. Cattelan's work was often based on simple puns or subverts cliched situations by, for example, substituting animals for people, an example of this would be his piece "Bidibidobidiboo", which is a squirrel that is slumped over a table, with a revolver at it's feet. In my own opinion I think that Cattelan's work is very good and different as he doesn't really care what people think as in an interview he said "the more questions raised about a piece, the better it is". This makes me feel that he is bothered about what the public think about his work and enjoys the publicity and shock factor.