Contemplator enim, 1991
GPC-0807
Collage on photo print
Seven parts 70 x 50 cm each, overall dimensions 70 x 359 cm
Fondazione Giulio e Anna Paolini, Turin
Gift of the artist, 14 December 2004, archive no. GPC-0807
The elements must be lined up in a horizontal row and placed at short intervals from each other.
• Fourth element: image from Davide Bertolotti, L’Italia pittoresca e descritta (Turin: Giuseppe Pomba e C., 1838), plate 304 (”Piazza Vittorio Emanuele a Torino”).
• Fifth element: figure from a portrait of Giulio Paolini taken by Gérard Amsellem, 1983.
• Sixth element, verso of the canvas: Diego Velázquez, Las Meninas, 1656, oil on canvas, 318 x 276 cm, Museo del Prado, Madrid.
• Background images: views of the entrance hallway of Giulio Paolini's home taken by Paolo Mussat Sartor, 1991.
• Title from Lucrezio, De rerum natura, Book II, lines 114-115 (“Contemplator enim, cum solis lumina cumque inserti fundunt radii per opaca domorum” / “Behold whenever the sun’s light and the rays, let in, pour down across dark halls of houses”).
| 1991 | Rivoli, Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Giulio Paolini. Anteprima 1, 4 May - 30 June, not repr. |
| 1991 | New York, SteinGladstone Gallery, Giulio Paolini, 26 October - 21 December. |
| 2008 | Barcelona, Museu Picasso, Olvidando a Velázquez / Forgetting Velázquez. Las Meninas, 15 May - 28 September, col. repr. pp. 167 (plate Rovine Future), 195 (plate Fuori l’autore); only the sixth element exhibited. |
| • | Art press 164 (Paris), December, 1991, repr. pp. 16-17 (exhibition view Rivoli 1991), col. repr. pp. 18 (plate L’ospite), 20 (plates Rovine future and La città proibita). |
| • | M. Disch, “Giulio Paolini. Hors-d’œuvre”, in Giulio Paolini. La voce del pittore - Scritti e interviste 1965-1995, edited by Id. (Lugano: ADV Publishing House, 1995), pp. 96-98, repr. no. 22 (plate Fuori l’autore). |
| • | Oggi per domani. Cinque artisti contemporanei nella Collezione BSI, exhibition catalogue, Lugano, Museo Cantonale d’Arte (Milan: Skira editore, 2001), repr. n. 70 p. 54 (plate Fuori l’autore). |
| • | B. Rüdiger, “Arte Povera. Le problème de la forme et son ombre”, in Arte Povera. Monument, contre-monument et histoire, edited by C. Palermo (Paris: Éditions Mimésis, 2023), pp. 294-295, col. repr. no. 14 p. 295 (plate L’ospite). |
