Les aventures de la dialectique (II), 1992
GPE-0086
Lithograph
29.7 x 21 cm
Signed on the recto, bottom centre: “Giulio Paolini”
Autograph numbering on the recto, bottom centre
100 in Arabic numerals from 1/100 to 100/100
30 in Roman numerals from I/XXX to XXX/XXX
Edizioni Essegi, Ravenna
The print was commissioned by the publishing house Edizioni Essegi, Ravenna – directed by Alvaro Beccatini and Danilo Montanari – on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of its activity. The artists who participated in the initiative celebrating the event were invited to conceive a small sized work to be printed as a lithograph.
The view of a tree-lined road presents at the centre a tree that is growing inside a tree stump. In the foreground, a reproduction of the first version of Les aventures de la dialectique – a work on paper made in 1975 (GPC-0372) – is torn to pieces, but leaving intact, in the manner of a passepartout, the white margin of the printed page, with the caption of the work in German at the bottom centre. The main fragment, representing a cypress that was born inside an oak, is grafted onto the pair of trees at the centre of the image in the background, thus doubling the plant graft that is accentuated by the white frame.
The paradox of the plant graft, which inspired this overlapping of images, is corroborated by the dialectical opposition between the view of the street in perspective, which directs one's gaze towards the background, and the dispersal of the fragments in the foreground, which holds the gaze on the picture plane.
The title comes from that of a famous book by the French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty (Les aventures de la dialectique, 1955) and at the same time it evokes the title of a painting by René Magritte (Éloge de la dialectique, 1937).
The original collage on wich the print is based is documented in the online Catalogue Raisonné of the works on paper at number GPC-0850.
Title from Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Les aventures de la dialectique (Paris: Gallimard, 1955).
| 1993 | Winterthur, Kunstmuseum Winterthur, Giulio Paolini. Impressions graphiques. Das druckgraphische Werk 1967-1992, 16 January - 7 March (catalogue Impressions graphiques. L’opera grafica 1967-1992 di Giulio Paolini [Turin: Marco Noire Editore, 1992], cat. no. 87). |
| 1995 | Lisbon, Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian / Centro de Arte Moderna José de Azeredo Perdigão, Giulio Paolini. Impressions graphiques. Múltiplos e Obra Gráfica 1969-1995, 16 March - 28 May, not repr. in the exhibition brochure (catalogue Impressions graphiques. L’opera grafica 1967-1992 di Giulio Paolini [Turin: Marco Noire Editore, 1992], update supplement 1992-95, cat. no. 87). |
| 1996 | Apolda, Kunsthaus Apolda Avantgarde, Giulio Paolini. Impressions graphiques, 27 September - 27 October (catalogue Impressions graphiques. L’opera grafica 1967-1992 di Giulio Paolini [Turin: Marco Noire Editore, 1992], update supplement 1992-95, cat. no. 87). |
| 1997 | Göppingen, Kunsthalle, Giulio Paolini. Impressions graphiques. Das graphische Druckwerk 1967-1995, 9 March - 13 April (catalogue Impressions graphiques. L’opera grafica 1967-1992 di Giulio Paolini [Turin: Marco Noire Editore, 1992], update supplement 1992-95, cat. no. 87). |
| 2019 | Boston, Krakow Witkin Gallery, Giulio Paolini: 1983-2010, 21 September - 2 November; artist’s proof. |
| • | Italie à la FIAC 1992 (Rome: Edisi Edizioni Sistema Italia, 1992), col. repr. p. 73. |
| • | Giulio Paolini. Impressions graphiques, l’opera grafica (Turin: Marco Noire Editore, 1995), update supplement 1992-95 to the volume Impressions graphiques. L’opera grafica 1967-1992 di Giulio Paolini (Turin: Marco Noire Editore, 1992), cat. no. 87, col. repr. |
| • | Carte Noire. Noire Editions 1980/2015 (Cologne: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, 2016), col. repr. n. pag. (artist’s proof). |
| • | L. Leonelli, “La mia traversata dei lidi ai libri”, in Il Sole 24 ore (Milan), 4 August 2019, col. repr. p. 19. |
