{"id":939656,"date":"2026-10-20T05:04:18","date_gmt":"2026-10-20T05:04:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/939656\/"},"modified":"2026-10-20T05:04:18","modified_gmt":"2026-10-20T05:04:18","slug":"before-banana-fame-maurizio-cattelan-made-ends-meet-delivering-letters-and-sperm-the-art-newspaper","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/939656\/","title":{"rendered":"Before banana fame, Maurizio Cattelan made ends meet delivering letters\u2014and sperm &#8211; The Art Newspaper"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"pt-dp-p font-text-light font-light text-lg leading-normal tracking-wide mb-base last:mb-0\" itemprop=\"text\">The art world\u2019s most mischievous japester, Maurizio Cattelan, showed his more human side in a recent interview in <a class=\"transition-colors duration-default shadow-externalLink hover:text-red-1\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/artanddesign\/2026\/sep\/03\/maurizio-cattelan-art-world-prankster-religion-bananas-hitler\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">The Guardian<\/a> newspaper on the eve of a major new show at the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin. <\/p>\n<p class=\"pt-dp-p font-text-light font-light text-lg leading-normal tracking-wide mb-base last:mb-0\" itemprop=\"text\">The Italian artist\u2014known for taping a banana to the wall (Comedian, 2019)\u2014stressed that he is not just a provocateur, explaining: \u201cMy work has always been serious. The problem is people often stop at the joke.\u201d Cattelan also addressed what happens next, pointing out in an arch philosophical way: \u201cI don\u2019t have a foundation. I don\u2019t have a studio, never had. I also don\u2019t have a family. A legacy would be like being so conscious about yourself that you have these constructions.\u201d <\/p>\n<p class=\"pt-dp-p font-text-light font-light text-lg leading-normal tracking-wide mb-base last:mb-0\" itemprop=\"text\">And what about his links to Berlin? The Guardian revealed that during his early years in the city, Maurizio was a postman, a mortuary attendant and a sperm donor\u2014death and life all rolled into one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The art world\u2019s most mischievous japester, Maurizio Cattelan, showed his more human side in a recent interview in&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":939657,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[1787,76,354,355,49,48,356,246458,75,65135],"class_list":["post-939656","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-artists","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-design","tag-diary","tag-entertainment","tag-maurizio-cattelan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/939656","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=939656"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/939656\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/939657"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=939656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=939656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=939656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}