Maurizio Cattelan's suspended horse, the 1997 work “Novecento” at the Rivoli museum

Anyone who has been to Turin cannot fail to remember the horse suspended from the dome of the former residence of the House of Savoy at Rivoli, which has housed a museum of contemporary art since 1984. Quite literally the subject of a nature morte, a still life, it is the means by which the artist Maurizio Cattelan hints at the existential condition of being unable to act. The work of 1997 is called Novecento, that is, The Twentieth Century. It is indeed the body of a horse, embalmed in a state of suspension, its hooves stretched towards the ground and its head drooping heavily downwards. The horse seems to embody an impulse that is fated never to be translated into action, nor to realise the energy stored within it. Cattelan himself has repeatedly spoken of the uncertainty he places at the foundation of his approach, and as his theme he invariably names failure.