L.O.V.E., 2023

Maurizio Cattelan

Narrator: At first glance, this may look like a colossal hand giving us the finger in the middle of the room. But a closer look shows that the other fingers are broken off, not folded – like a time-worn sculptural remnant from roman antiquity. If all the fingers had still been there, it might have looked like a fascist salute.
 
The original version of the veined hand in this monumental format on the seven-metre plinth stands on the Piazza degli Affari in front of the stock exchange in Milan, the Italian financial capital.
 
The sculpture was created in connection with a major Cattelan retrospective in Milan in 2010, where it was intended as a temporary installation. Despite lively debate before it was installed, the work quickly became popular with the inhabitants and the local government, so the sculpture is still there, fourteen years later.
 
Italy suffered severely in the financial crisis of 2008, and the location outside the stock exchange meant that the sculpture could be seen as a message to the Italian financial elite, who, according to many, were partly to blame for the difficulties.
 
The name of the sculpture, L.O.V.E., can be read as the word love, but is also an acronym for the Italian words libertà, odio, vendetta and eternità, which mean freedom, hate, revenge and eternity.