Permanent Food

Book excerpt: The word "appropriate" can have two very different meanings depending on whether it is used as an adjective or a verb. In the case of "Permanent Food," artist Maurizio Cattelan and Paola Manfrin's periodical of pilfering, it is the active usage of the word, and only the active usage, that is appropriate. Bound together in each issue is a thoroughly bewildering, amusing, grotesque, and blasª selection of images culled from anywhere, everywhere, and nowhere: a German electrical company's ad featuring Tom and Jerry; a trash-strewn airplane interior; a naked fashion model with wide tan lines; a detail of a Victorian dummy; super-tech eyelashes by MAC; a naked woman with her toes in a skeleton's eye and nose sockets; a Mapplethorpe photograph of two leather men; a sweet ceramic puppy; a snow field; a crashed VW beetle; and much, much more. You can't even imagine how much more.