Spectacle Culture and the Mediated Image
I tried to overlap two opposite realities, Sicily and Hollywood: after all, images are just projections of desire, and I wanted to shade their boundaries. It might be a parody, but it’s also a tribute. . . . There is something hypnotic in Hollywood: it’s a sign that immediately speaks about obsessions, failures, and ambitions.
For the 2001 Venice Biennale, Cattelan erected a replica of the iconic Hollywood sign—made of 500 tons of steel, iron, and concrete16—on top of the municipal garbage dump in Palermo, Sicily. In doing so, he displaced an image associated with dreams of the glamorous movie industry to a gritty and decidedly unglamorous locale. As he explained, “It’s like spraying stardust over the Sicilian landscape: it’s a cut and paste dream" (“Maurizio Cattelan | Hollywood Landing in Sicily,” http://www.postmedia.net/cattelan/hollywood.htm). On second glance, however, both cities share some commonalities. Palermo and Los Angeles are both major metropolises, southern in their geographic orientation and relatively parched. Both are stricken with economic problems and urban unrest, with racial tensions in Los Angeles and organized crime in Palermo being defining factors in each city’s public profile. In fact, like Hollywood, Sicily has captured the imagination of many illustrious feature-film directors.
Installed only for a brief period of
Cattelan’s replica of the Hollywood sign was the
first contribution ever presented
outside Venice. Cattelan chartered a
bring some collectors, critics, and curators from
to experience the work in person. Most
viewers, however, have only
seen the work in
Cattelan understands and exploits the capacity of images to seduce, provoke, and disrupt. From the beginning of his career, he has created sculptures, and produced events with their dissemination as photographic images in mind. He has a highly developed editorial eye and has assimilated the tactics of advertising and commercial photography, so prevalent in our media-saturated culture. He judges the success of a work by how well it translates into a picture and how well the picture is reproduced and transmitted by the media. His sculptures can be effectively adapted into the pictorial realm, and their impact is not diminished when they are illustrated in print. The images manage to have the same intellectual and emotional impact as the sculptures do in person. Cattelan has said, “Today we mostly see art through photos and reproductions. So in the end it almost doesn’t matter where the actual piece is. Sooner or later it’s gonna end up in your head, and that’s when things get interesting. I’m more interested in brains and memories than in sitespecific works” (Sirmans, “Maurizio Cattelan: Image Maker,” p. 23).
- Have your students ever seen this sign before? What associations do they have with this image?
- Although this may look like the famous Hollywood sign in California, a symbol of the movie industry, it is actually a replica that Cattelan had built over a garbage dump in Palermo. Landmarks are so interwoven with the sites they occupy that we rarely think about one without the other—the Empire State Building and New York or the Eiffel Tower and Paris—but Cattelan’s Hollywood makes us think about what happens when a landmark is relocated. Cattelan says that his intent was to “[spray] stardust over the Sicilian landscape.” Did he succeed? How does knowing that this work is a re-creation in another place change its meaning?
- For generations people have traveled the world to visit original works of art in person, but Cattelan creates his work with the knowledge that many will only see it as a photograph in magazines and newspapers or online. He has said, “Today we mostly see art through photos and reproductions. So in the end it almost doesn’t matter where the actual piece is. Sooner or later it’s gonna end up in your head, and that’s when things get interesting. I’m more interested in brains and memories than in site-specific works.” What is the class’s response to Cattelan’s statement?
- As a
class, brainstorm a list of all the landmarks you can think of.
the list is created, analyze what characteristics and attributes
to be present to deem something a landmark.
- Landmarks can be manmade, like
buildings and bridges, or natural
sites, like a tree or mountain
peak, and have special significance
because of their history,
construction, or long association with a
location. Landmarks help
identify a place and give it a unique
What landmarks are associated with your city or neighborhood? What qualities make them landmarks? What associations do they hold? Have students draw or photograph a neighborhood landmark and then create a picture postcard. On the back, they can tell the story of the landmark selected and its importance to your community.
Visual Arts, Social Studies
- Cattlelan’s work is created with the
knowledge that most people will
see it reproduced in print and/or on
the Web. Students should select
something that is important to them,
perhaps an item they made
or own. They should photograph it so that
the image conveys their
relationship to the object and then compare
the photo to the
original object. What qualities do they think were
was lost in the reproduction?
- The Hollywood sign in California has
undergone its own set of
transformations. Now a famous landmark, it
was erected in 1923 as
an advertisement for a real-estate development
and originally read
“Hollywoodland.” It was not intended to be
permanent, but with
the rise of the American cinema in Los Angeles,
it became an
internationally recognized symbol of the movie industry.
website, hollywoodsign.com, features a 24-7 webcam, illustrated
and suggestions for how to get the best photos.