Maurizio Cattelan Quotes

No heirloom of humankind captures the past as do art and language.

History is the interpretation of the significance that the past has for us.

History is nothing but gossip about the past, with the hope that it might be true.

Part of my attraction to ancient art is that there is an element of risk, of speculation.

When I'm asked about legacy, I say it's too early to talk about legacy.

It is not history, theology or mythology that interest me. It is the fact that history, theology or mythology could have alternative interpretations or explanations. I try to connect the dots between the past and the present.

To me, the drive for monumentality is as inbred as the desire for food and sex, regardless of how we denigrate it. Monuments differ in different periods. Each age has its own.

I wanted to make pictures where you would not know who took them. I also bring the present into the past.

History is what we would make of it.

Sometimes a President seems greater after he has left office than while he was in it.

There can be no dedication to Canada's future without a knowledge of its past.

Being in London has really taught me how important history is. Just having information of the past. It helps you predict the future, which is all we really have as, you know, humans.

I don't want the pictures to mean things. But the implication of the image and its relationship to the people that are viewing it is something I'm really interested in.

When you look at classical structures, they're often linked to literature, music, or a poem. They were constructed by master builders, which means it's not something standard that you can copy.

If we do not, as historians, write the history of great events as well as the small stories that make up the past, others will, and they will not necessarily do it well.

Art points to things. It's a way of giving people not the standard way of looking at the world.

Modernism is an outmoded way of thinking about design: it just doesn't reflect the way we live now. It always puts forward this idea that the past is irrelevant to tomorrow - and tomorrow is all that matters. But the past is part of who we are.

Art is subjective and, as an artiste, if our artistic work is not appreciated by the majority, it hurts.

I'm always wary of the lessons of the past. There's a lot of past out there, and you can draw whatever lessons you want.

My personal belief is that there's not much value in showing things from the past that have no relevance to today or failing to connect some kind of dotted line to where we are today, because otherwise, it just becomes homework.

There's something about being around a long time that puts stuff in perspective.

The beauty about history is that it's open to perception.

It's something that you pick up at a history class in college, the idea that history and time is something to which we can't even hold a candle to. We, as human beings, are just a small element in the overarching sweep of narrative history. That really had a profound effect on me, that realization.

The idea that somehow the way forward is to abandon the past, to me, is preposterous and both undesirable and unrealistic.

The passion for the past is clearly about more than market forces or government policies. History responds to a variety of needs, from greater understanding of ourselves and our world to answers about what to do.