Francis Picabia: Senza titolo, 1917, 1970

For his 1970 solo show entitled “Vedo”, presented at the galleries Qui Arte Contemporanea in Rome and Notizie in Turin, Paolini showed, together with his own works, the original painting by Joseph Albers 2 greys + 2 greens (1955), whose owner at the time was Luciano Pistoi. For the “III Biennale internazionale della giovane pittura” in Bologna he instead showed Sans titre (1917) by Francis Picabia, a tempera and collage on cardboard that had been made available to him by a collector friend. In the exhibition catalogue Paolini accompanied the reproduction of the work with three texts by different authors: a passage by Giambattista Vico, an extract from an essay by Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and A Yellow Rose by Jorge Luis Borges.1 In yet another variant, made for the 1970 Venice Biennale but abandoned in the end, Paolini had planned to show the painting Untitled (1964) by Cy Twombly2 along with his own work.
“By exhibiting a painting that was not my own – Paolini remarks –, I wanted to objectively repropose my relationship with the painting, presenting the subjective relationship, and not the one mediated by the language, between me and the painting, like a work of my own. This type of attitude brings together the creation of a work and its perception, the author himself tries to convey to the viewer his emotions as a viewer”.3 “The idea is to ‘see’ things: i.e. the painting is divested of all of its attributes of placement to offer itself up to the visitor's gaze. Hence, it is not a question of a critical choice or of the rediscovery of a particular work, but of the affirmation that this, like endless others, is a moment of creation”.4

1 The passage from Vico is an extract from Principii di Scienza Nuova, book II: Della sapienza poetica, section II, chap. I, 401-402; cf. G. Vico, Opere, tome I, I Meridiani (Milan: Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, 1990), pp. 585-86. The quotation from Merleau-Ponty is from Le doute de Cézanne [Cézanne’s Doubt] (1945); cf. M. Merleau-Ponty, Senso e non-senso (Milan: Il Saggiatore, 1962), pp. 36-37. The text by Borges is taken from the collected works entitled El hacedor [The Maker] (1960); cf. J.L. Borges, Tutte le opere, vol. I (Milan: Mondadori, 1984), p. 1141.
2 The idea is attested to in the list of works reported in the catalogue of the 35th International Art Exhibition (Venice: The Venice Biennale, 1970), p. 72.
3 G. Paolini interviewed by A. Bonito Oliva, in Paolini: opere 1961/73, exhibition catalogue, Milan, Studio Marconi, 1973, n. pag.; republished in Giulio Paolini. La voce del pittore – Scritti e interviste 1965-1995, edited by M. Disch (Lugano: ADV Publishing House, 1995), p. 156.
4 G. Paolini, Note di lavoro, in the version published in G. Paolini, Idem (Turin: Giulio Einaudi editore, 1975), p. 43., new edition (Milan: Electa, 2023), p. 69.