Several of Maurizio Cattelan’s most celebrated works have at their centre wax figures modelled by another man. The figure of John Paul II lying beneath a meteorite, the kneeling child with Hitler’s face, Cattelan himself hanging from a coat rack: those effigies were modelled by Daniel Druet, a French sculptor whom Emmanuel Perrotin contacted in 1999 at Cattelan’s request, and who modelled the figures for eight works dated between 1999 and 2004. The works were presented to the public exclusively under Cattelan’s name, and the art world recognised them as his. Years later, Druet went to court to claim authorship. The French courts declared his claim inadmissible at first instance and on appeal, but did not resolve the substantive question it raised.
The question is one of the oldest in contemporary art, and one of the most alive: when one person conceives a work and another executes it materially, which contribution makes it possible to attribute authorship? That of the person who chose the characters and decided the scene and its arrangement, or that of the person who gave material form to the face and body represented. It goes back at least to the workshops of the Renaissance, but conceptual art has radicalised it, because there execution is often delegated entirely. Druet brought it before a judge in its most ambitious form: he claimed neither co-authorship nor rights limited to the figures, but exclusive authorship of all eight complete works.
Many reports simplified what happened, turning it back to front. The French courts did not decide that the idea is worth more than the execution, nor declare Cattelan the sole author, nor lay down doctrine on conceptual art. They did not rule on the merits. Druet had sued Galerie Perrotin, the publisher Turenne Editions and the Monnaie de Paris, which had exhibited several of the works, but not Cattelan himself. Cattelan entered the proceedings because the Monnaie de Paris brought him in under a warranty claim (appel en garantie), and that, according to the courts, did not create a direct procedural relationship between him and Druet. Since the authorship Druet claimed was the one the law presumes to belong to Cattelan, unless proven otherwise, the court concluded that a claim seeking to displace that presumption also had to be brought against him personally. As it was not, the claim was declared inadmissible, in 2022 and again on appeal in 2024.
The legal mechanism is more interesting than a mere procedural defect. Unless proven otherwise, French law presumes the author to be whoever appears as such when the work is disclosed: the name under which it is presented to the public. The rule spares anyone from having to prove the authorship of each work from scratch, but it can be rebutted. To rebut it, one must contest it against the person who benefits from it. Druet sought to overturn Cattelan’s presumption of authorship without bringing the action against him personally, and the court answered, in essence, that the question could not be resolved in the absence of the person the answer would affect.
Druet raised one of the hardest questions conceptual art can bring before the law, and the proceedings stopped before examining it. Not because the court decided the question lacked interest, nor because it gave priority to conception over execution: the rules on whom the claim had to be brought against halted the litigation before any examination of the merits. The substantive question went unanswered because the procedural relationship needed to answer it had not been established.
I do not know whether Druet would have been right on the merits. He had modelled the figures with his own sculptural expertise and argued that the instructions he received left room for creative decisions. The opposing position attributed to Cattelan the conception, the choice of characters, their arrangement and the staging of the complete works. Deciding between the two positions would have required examining evidence and establishing each party’s creative contribution. That is precisely what the courts did not do. They found that the works had been disclosed under Cattelan’s name, that he enjoyed the legal presumption and that Druet had not brought the action to rebut it against him personally.
There are questions the law never gets to answer when the procedure does not allow them to be examined on the merits. The answer depends on how the question is asked. In those proceedings, the court could not displace Cattelan’s presumption of authorship unless Druet had brought the corresponding claim against him personally. An action brought against Cattelan personally, or a claim with a different scope, would have raised different procedural and substantive issues; whether it would have been admissible or would have succeeded is another matter.
The works remain attributed to Cattelan, and his legal presumption of authorship is intact. Not because a judge compared their respective contributions and declared that conception prevails over execution, but because Druet’s action did not allow that examination to take place. He lost the case. The question of which contribution made it possible to attribute authorship of those eight works was never adjudicated.
On the open conversation
This text starts from the lawsuit brought by Daniel Druet, the sculptor who modelled the wax figures for eight of Maurizio Cattelan’s works, against the gallery, the publisher and the Monnaie de Paris. The Tribunal judiciaire de Paris (2022) and the Cour d’appel de Paris (2024) declared his claim inadmissible because he had not sued Cattelan personally, the presumed author of the works since they had been disclosed under his name. I am not claiming that the courts decided that conception prevails over execution, nor that they declared Cattelan the sole author: they did not rule on the merits, and presenting it that way, as some reports have done, is inaccurate. What interests me is precisely that the question of authorship of those eight works was left without a decision on the merits in these proceedings, halted by a procedural rule. The latest ruling I have found is the 2024 appeal judgment; I have not found an appeal in cassation or any subsequent decision of the Cour de cassation. If anyone wishes to contribute from the perspective of copyright law, art history or studio practice, this notebook remains open.
Sources
Cour d’appel de Paris, Pôle 5, Chambre 1, judgment of 5 June 2024, RG 22/14922. It sets out the background, the operative part of the 2022 decision, the parties’ claims and the grounds for inadmissibility. The fact that it is hosted in the Cour de cassation database does not mean that court has ruled on an appeal.
Tribunal judiciaire de Paris, 3rd Chamber, 2nd Section, judgment of 8 July 2022, RG 18/05382. Its relevant content is reproduced and upheld in the appeal judgment.
Conseil des maisons de vente, ‘Daniel Druet vs Maurizio Cattelan : le non-procès de l’art conceptuel’, 1 September 2022. Specialist legal analysis of the procedural nature of the first-instance decision.
Notes on the ruling
Grounds: inadmissibility for failure to sue Maurizio Cattelan personally, the presumed author under Article L. 113-1 of the French Intellectual Property Code, despite claiming exclusive authorship for himself. The Monnaie de Paris’s warranty claim against Cattelan did not create a direct procedural relationship between Druet and Cattelan. The courts did not compare the two parties’ creative contributions.
Subject matter: eight works dated between 1999 and 2004 whose wax figures Druet modelled, including ‘La Nona Ora’, ‘Him’, ‘La Rivoluzione Siamo Noi’ and ‘Now’. Druet claimed exclusive authorship of the complete works, the moral right of attribution and damages, the amount of which varies across published sources.
Status: the latest ruling found is the appeal judgment of 5 June 2024; no appeal in cassation or subsequent ruling on the merits has been found.