Toilet Paper Magazine

Maurizio Cattelan and Pierpaolo Ferrari for The New York Times Magazine, 22 February 2015

About eight months ago, I became infatuated by Maurizio Cattelan and Pierpaolo Ferrari's Toilet Paper Magazine. I may even have purchased a couple Christmas presents that featured this image...

... and a 2015 calendar...

 ... in which I am currently responding to each month on Instagram...

(with taxidermy coyote eyes)

(and a package of organic rainbow carrots).


From the New Yorker:

In Toilet Paper, the images might appear to have been appropriated from world’s most surreal stock-photograph service, but they’re all made from scratch. “Every issue starts with a theme, always something basic and general, like love or greed,” Cattelan explained. “Then, as we start, we move like a painter on a canvas, layering and building up the issue. We always find ourselves in a place we didn’t expect to be. The best images are the result of improvisation.” Many images are rejected, he said, because they’re “not Toilet Paper enough.” What makes a Toilet Paper photo? “We keep homing in on what a Toilet Paper image is. Like distilling a perfume. It’s not about one particular style or time frame; what makes them Toilet Paper is a special twist. An uncanny ambiguity.”

I wish I had seen Cattelan and Ferrari's mural on the High Line billboard in June 2012:

I am fascinated with any artist/trickster whose work that I have respected who announced his retirement from the art world yet continues to produce provocative imagery (and who may not have truly retired - hello Marcel Duchamp).