Maurizio Cattelan Sued Over Authorship of Works
French sculptor Daniel Druet is suing Italian sculptor Maurizio Cattelan in a Paris courtroom over claims that Druet was by no means credited for creating a few of Cattelan’s best-known works, Le Monde reviews. Druet, an achieved shaper of wax who notably created various effigies on view on the Musée Grévin in Paris, and whose sitters have included Serge Gainsbourg and François Mitterand, has requested the courtroom to call him sole creator of various works at the moment attributed to Cattelan. Amongst these are La nona ora, 1999, a wax determine of Pope John Paul II susceptible and struggling below the load of a colossal meteor resting on his thigh; Him, 2001, a life-size sculpture of an evidently remorseful Hitler kneeling and searching heavenward; and Stephanie, 2003, a likeness of mannequin Stephanie Seymour, then the spouse of megacollector Peter Brant, cupping her naked breasts whereas showing to materialize from inside a wall.
Druet is moreover asking for roughly $5.25 million in damages from Galerie Perrotin, which represents Cattelan, and the Monnaie de Paris, which held a retrospective of the Italian artist’s work in 2016. The French master of moulage contends that Cattelan within the late Nineteen Nineties requested him to create a dozen sculptures and that he did so, however below “obscure” phrases of settlement. Perrotin corroborated Druet’s evaluation of the accord, confirming that no contract was mentioned, with seller and proprietor Emmanuel Perrotin characterizing the gallery’s perspective as “naïve.” Druet and Perrotin agree that the French sculptor was compensated for his efforts on the time.
The trial in regards to the matter is to start Could 13. Talking with Artnews on behalf of Perrotin, legal professional Pierre Olivier-Sur argued that the “hundred-year-old case regulation at the moment governing the standards to find out an art work’s authorship is unsuitable for conceptual artwork.” Sur additional famous, “If precedent doesn’t evolve, it may have severe penalties for the actors of the artwork world.”
