174, 1965

The photograph reproduces a linear diagram that represents how long the avant-garde movement from the early twentieth century to the late 1960s lasted, starting from the year 1900 and the “Jugendstil”, below, all the way, above, to 1970 and “Popart” [sic], the last current cited corresponding to the early 1960s. The title refers to the page number of the book from which Paolini took the image, in particular, the part of the diagram relating to the most recent developments.1
“The meaning is that of giving the painting itself the measure of the historical place with which it coincides: the painting is thus the extreme and physical limit of t he diagram that it reproduces”,2 said the artist in 1972.
The work is a reproduction of the first, larger version made during the same year (GPO-0091).

1 The image is taken from K. Kranz, Capire l’arte moderna (Milan: Edizioni di Comunità, 1964).
2 G. Paolini in G. Celant, Giulio Paolini (New York: Sonnabend Press, 1972), p. 45 (revised translation, republished in Giulio Paolini 1960-1972, edited by G. Celant [Milan: Fondazione Prada, 2003], p. 136), reprint (Cinisello Balsamo: Silvana Editoriale, 2019), p. 45.