Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan by Raichel le Goff

You can debate about this one for hours at the kitchen table. A stuffed horse sells as a work of art for well over a million dollars. Maurizio Cattelan's 'La Ballata di Trotsky' sold to an anonymous bidder at Christie's in London surpassing its estimate of £400,000. London art watchers already knew the horse well, it hung in the Abracadabra exhibition at the Tate (1999) where it had a different title "Twentieth Century". The same show also featured Cattelan's squirrel suicide (pictured below).

Bidibidobidiboo: Another Cattelan masterpiece

Quotes from the Christie's Catalogue

"By making ironic references to other artists, especially to his Italian predecessors, he re-writes art history from a charlatan's point of view," said the sale's description of Cattelan's work.

"His work is subversive, humorous and sharply ironic, frequently mocking the art market by attacking the very infrastructure and presentation that supports it."

Bidibidobidiboo: Another Cattelan masterpiece
The suicide of a squirrel

The price just paid for Cattelan's horse (whose real life name as a racehorse was Tiramisu, if anyone is interested) reflects the high current market value for anything by the artist as his most controversial piece, far out-distancing the horse in shock value was 'The Ninth Hour' shown in the R.A.'s Apocalypse exhibition this year. Cattelan's sculpture of everyone's favourite Pope pinned to the red carpet by a meteorite sold for £619,500 in New York.

Cattelan's image of the Pope was recently sold in New York