Maurizio Cattelan is a very controversial artist. However, this controversial nature hasn’t stopped the city of Milan, Italy, from celebrating Cattelan’s work with a massive public display of some of his classics, including a giant severed hand statue making a rude gesture, ironically called L.O.V.E., in the middle of Milan’s business district. The 11-meter (36-feet)-high middle finger is right in front of Milan’s stock exchange.
It’s part of a big display of Cattelan’s work, called Against Ideologies, organized by Massamiliano Finazzer Flory, Milan’s minister of culture. Flory defended the work, saying that “(Cattelan’s works) call our times into question, offering themselves as a mirror, however cracked, of our present.” As for the giant rude gesture, Catelan describes it more as a work of imagination than as a deliberate act of provocation. Then again, he’s not the guy on the other end of the giant flipped bird.
Tags: Maurizio Cattelan, L.O.V.E., Milan, Italy, giant middle finger statue, unusual art, weird art, middle finger art, rude gesture art, Against Ideologies, Massimiliano Finazzer Flory, middle finger statue, giant middle finger, middle finger in front of Milan Stock Exchange