Maurizio Cattelan's giant cat, named Felix after the famous cartoon cat created in the early twentieth century by Otto Messmer (American, 1892-1983) draws on popular culture and delves into our collective imagination and desire for spectacle. Measuring more than forty-six feet in length with a tail that extends twenty-six feet in the air, the cat skeleton dwarfs a human being, playing with scale to shift the power relationship with the viewer.
As in his other works, with Felix Cattelan experiments with how viewers must suspend their disbelief in order to succumb to the fantasy of his vision. In 2001, when visiting Chicago in preparation for a commission at the MCA, Cattelan was inspired by Sue - the most complete Tyrannosaurus rex ever discovered -at the Field Museum of Natural History. Cattelan designed Felix for a particular space, the MCA atrium and wanted his work to become a popular museum attraction, like Sue.
Cattelan's work, involving distortions of scale and reality, probes issues of originality, popular culture, humor, and fear. Inspired by the public's fascination with the origins of Sue, the popular Tyrannosaurus rex on view at the Field Museum, Cattelan has transformed a household cat into an ominously gargantuan figure. While challenging viewers' perceptions of the subject matter and its scale, Cattelan also questions notions of both artifact and exhibition. Naming the skeleton after the cartoon character Felix the Cat, Cattelan jokingly undermines historical fact with fiction to reactivate the realm of childhood wonderment within a contemporary art public space.
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Considering these ideas, and the kind of dialogue Cattelan was creating with the Field Museum,if you were to submit your sculpture (the skeleton) as a proposal for a large public monument somewhere in Chicago, where would you have it placed, and why?
Considering these ideas, and the kind of dialogue Cattelan was creating with the Field Museum,if you were to submit your sculpture (the skeleton) as a proposal for a large public monument somewhere in Chicago, where would you have it placed, and why?
