Adam Lindemann got ready for today’s opening of the Maurizio Cattelan retrospective at the Guggenheim with think piece on the artist whose work he collects in depth. Lindemann makes an interesting connection to Duchamp not through their similar art practices:
He is not without talents, one of which is his strengths as a curator; the Berlin biennial that he curated in 2006 was one of the best shows I’ve ever seen. There’s also the little-known fact that he is a sizeable collector of art, mainly that of his contemporaries. He is well aware of prices and is as market-savvy as a person can be. Duchamp in turn also acted as an art adviser/dealer in his day, curating shows and advising his favored collectors, the Arensbergs, to buy the work of Constantin Brancusi when no one else was interested. Today you can see those Brancusis in the Philadelphia Museum of Art along with Duchamp’s amazing masterpiece Étant donnés. Mr. Cattelan’s parallel activities are similarly complementary to his overall position in the art world: he makes, he curates, he buys, he sells and he also advises, in his case Greek mega-collector Dakis Joannou.
