Académie 3, 1965

The photographic canvas – achieved by overlapping two negatives – portrays the artist in a slightly curved position before a blank canvas, in the role of the painter at work. On the canvas Paolini has made a pictorial gesture with blue oil (whose brand is referred to in the title), so as to create a paradox: the sign of the colour drops down behind the painter, while the canvas before him remains perfectly blank.
The actual application of colour on the canvas – the artist’s physical gesture, the concrete trace on the pictorial support – has no other purpose than to evoke the absence of a relationship (or the refusal of a direct relationship) between the artist and his painting. Before the canvas the painter confronts himself critically with the act of painting; rather than subordinating the canvas to his gesture, he chooses to wonder about the very concept of both the painting and the pictorial act .
Together with the use of photography, the introduction of the figure of the artist and of his relationship with the work is the main theme in Paolini's 1965 output. "Photography", the artist explained in 1972, "lets lets me dilate the language all the way to including in my exploration the gestures and figure of the artist".1

1 G. Paolini in G. Celant, Giulio Paolini (New York: Sonnabend Press, 1972), p. 52 (revised translation, republished in Giulio Paolini 1960-1972, edited by G. Celant [Milan: Fondazione Prada, 200], p. 148), reprint (Cinisello Balsamo: Silvana Editoriale, 2019), p. 52.