De pictura, 1979
GPO-0417
Pencil, nails and collage on primed canvas, black ink inscription on reversed canvas, photographic fragments
Nine parts 80 x 120 cm each, overall dimensions 245 x 365 cm
Signed, titled, and dated on the recto, on the reversed canvas: “Giulio Paolini / De pictura / 1979”
Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, Stuttgart
Acquired in 1980, inventory no. 3366
Nine canvases placed one right next to the other at short intervals reproduce the drawing in perspective of an exhibition space. The overturned central element simulates the verso of the painting situated on the fourth side of this room. On the side walls two other paintings feature nails along the outer side to corroborate their verisimilitude. A figure wearing an antique costume looks at the painting that, from our point of view, we can only see from the verso. In his raised hand he holds several photographic fragments of another work (Parnaso, 1979, GPO-0416), on view in the same exhibition for which the work was made (the profile of the hand continues onto one of the torn details), while the other fragments of the same image are strewn about on the ground.
While the stand-in reflects our own gaze before the work, the torn photographs, the reversed canvas and the nails along the sides of the drawn canvases accentuate the diaphragm that separates the ideal perspective of the figure in costume inside the painting from our “blind” gaze, confined to this side of that insurmountable limit.
The dimension of the representation evoked by way of the perspective, with its illusory spatiality and ambiguous virtuality, is accentuated by the title, which harkens back to that of the famous treatise by Leon Battista Alberti (1435), in which, for the first time ever, the author theorized the ideas of the new Renaissance vision, founded on perspectival construction in relation to its use in painting.
This is the last of the six variants on the same theme, developed between 1977 and 1979 (GPO-0344, GPO-0345, GPO-0367, GPO-0385, GPO-0412, GPO-0417).
Figure from Thomas Hope, Costumes of the Greeks and Romans (New York: Dover Publications, 1962), plate 285 (“Roman dresses”).
| 1979 | Milan, Studio Marconi, Giulio Paolini. Atto unico in tre quadri, 18 October - 25 November, repr. pp. 70-71, referred to in the texts by C. Bertelli p. 9, G. Vattimo pp. 15-16. |
| 1980 | Amsterdam, Stedelijk Museum, Giulio Paolini, 10 April - 26 May, touring to: Oxford, The Museum of Modern Art, 8 June - 20 July, cited in the checklist of exhibited works and repr. p. 59; exhibited in Amsterdam only. |
| 1986 | Stuttgart, Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, Giulio Paolini, 20 September - 2 November, cited in the checklist of exhibited works vol. 4 no. 29 p. 52, col. repr. vol. 4 p. 33, commentary in the text by G. Inboden vol. 1 pp. 17-19, 21. |
| 1989 | Cologne, Rheinhallen der Kölner Messe, Bilderstreit. Widerspruch, Einheit und Fragment in der Kunst seit 1960, 8 April - 28 June, cited in the checklist of exhibited works no. 538 p. 526, not repr. |
| 2007-08 | Stuttgart, Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, Konzentriert! Kunst von 1350 bis heute, 17 novembre 2007 - 26 maggio 2008, no catalogue. |
| • | G. Paolini in Giulio Paolini, vol. Images/Index (Villeurbanne: Le Nouveau Musée, 1984), p. 102. |
| • | G. Paolini, “De la peinture”, in Art press 172 (Paris), September, 1992, p. 51. |
| • | Giulio Paolini. Premio Bolaffi 1980 (Turin: Giulio Bolaffi Editore, 1980), repr. p. 28. |
| • | Giulio Paolini. Werke und Schriften 1960-1980 (Lucerne: Kunstmuseum Luzern, 1981), repr. n. pag. (exhibition view Amsterdam 1980). |
| • | Identité Italienne. L’art en Italie depuis 1959, edited by G. Celant (Paris-Florence: Centre Georges Pompidou and Centro Di, 1981), repr. p. 607. |
| • | Jahrbuch der Staatlichen Kunstsammlungen in Baden-Württemberg, vol. 18 (Munich: 1981), catalogue entry by G. Inboden pp. 166-167, repr. p. 167. |
| • | E. Franz, “Del bello intelligibile – Die geistige Schönheit”, in Giulio Paolini. Del bello intelligibile, exhibition catalogue, Bielefeld, Kunsthalle Bielefeld, 1982, p. 6, repr.; republished in Pratiques. Réflexions sur l’Art 2 (Rennes), Autumn, 1996, p. 39, repr. |
| • | Malerei und Plastik des 20. Jahrhunderts, edited by K. von Maur and G. Inboden (Stuttgart: Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, 1982), catalogue entry by G. Inboden pp. 250-251, repr. p. 251 (idem in the second edition Stuttgart: 1984). |
| • | S. Isler, Del bello intelligibile. Semiotische Analyse zu sechs Werken von Giulio Paolini, PhD dissertation (Zurich: Philosophische Fakultät I der Universität Zürich, 1983), pp. 189-191, 195-196, 199-213, not repr. |
| • | Giulio Paolini, vol. Images/Index (Villeurbanne: Le Nouveau Musée, 1984), repr. p. 139. |
| • | Giulio Paolini. La Casa di Lucrezio, exhibition catalogue, Spoleto, Palazzo Rosari Spada (Casalecchio di Reno: Grafis Edizioni, 1984), repr. p. 20. |
| • | Giulio Paolini. “Tutto qui”, exhibition catalogue, Ravenna, Pinacoteca Comunale, Loggetta Lombardesca (Ravenna: Agenzia Editoriale Essegi, 1985), repr. no. 31. |
| • | Sonsbeek 86. International Sculpture Exhibition, exhibition catalogue, Arnhem (Utrecht: Veen-Reflex, 1986), vol. 1, repr. p. 230. |
| • | G. Paolini, Suspense. Breve storia del vuoto in tredici stanze (Florence: Hopeful Monster editore, 1988), repr. p. 199. |
| • | F. Poli, “Note di lettura”, in Id., Giulio Paolini (Turin: Lindau, 1990), p. 26, repr. no. 93; republished in Giulio Paolini. Von heute bis gestern / Da oggi a ieri, exhibition catalogue, Graz, Neue Galerie im Landesmuseum Joanneum (Ostfildern-Ruit: Cantz Verlag, 1998), pp. 41, 43. |
| • | Antiguitat-modernitat en l’art del segle XX, exhibition catalogue, Barcelona, Fundació Joan Miró, 1990, repr. p. 160. |
| • | A. Zevi, “Giulio Paolini: Le repliche del naufragio / The replicas of the shipwreck”, in L’Architettura 37, no. 433 (Rome), November, 1991, p. 907, repr. p. 908. |
| • | G. Paolini, “De la peinture”, in Art press 172 (Paris), September, 1992, p. 51, repr. |
| • | A. Zevi, “Three Artistic Generations in Contemporary Italy” in Three Artistic Generations in Contemporary Italy, exhibition catalogue, Tel Aviv, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Helena Rubinstein Pavilion for Contemporary Art, 1993, p. 81, repr. |
| • | M. Disch, “Giulio Paolini. Hors-d’oeuvre”, in Giulio Paolini. La voce del pittore – Scritti e interviste 1965-1995, edited by Id. (Lugano: ADV Publishing House, 1995), pp. 80-82, 86-87, 109, repr. no. 8. |
| • | Giulio Paolini. Von heute bis gestern / Da oggi a ieri, op. cit. (Ostfildern-Ruit: 1998), repr. pp. 26, 256. |
| • | Oggi per domani. Cinque artisti contemporanei nella Collezione BSI, exhibition catalogue, Lugano, Museo Cantonale d’Arte (Milan: Skira editore, 2001), repr. p. 54. |
| • | A. Zevi, “Una memoria ‘storicamente scorretta’”, in Arteinmemoria, exhibition catalogue, Rome, Scavi di Ostia Antica (Rome: Incontri Internazionali d’Arte, 2002), pp. 65-66, not repr. |
| • | A. Zevi, Peripezie del dopoguerra nell’arte italiana (Turin: Giulio Einaudi editore, 2005), pp. 363-364, not repr. |
| • | G. Di Genova, Storia dell’Arte Italiana del ‘900 per generazioni. Generazione Anni Quaranta, vol. 6.1 (Bologna: Edizioni Bora, 2007), p. 13, not repr. |
| • | M. Disch, Giulio Paolini. Catalogo ragionato 1960-1999, vol. 1 (Milan: Skira editore, 2008), cat. no. 417 p. 425, repr. |
| • | Staatsgalerie Stuttgart. Die Sammlung. Meisterwerke vom 14. bis zum 21. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart-Munich: Staatsgalerie Stuttgart and Hirmer Verlag, 2008), p. 263 (catalogue entry by V. Klewitz), col. repr. no. 194 p. 263 (installation view at Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart). |
| • | L’arte moderna in Intesa Sanpaolo. L’ultimo novecento, edited by C. Pirovano and F. Tedeschi (Milan: Intesa Sanpaolo and Mondadori Electa, 2013), pp. 222-223 (referred to in the catalogue entry by F. Tedeschi related to the cycle of the Studi per “De Pictura”), not repr. |
| • | J. Lageira, “Giulio Paolini. Ut pictura poesis”, in Id., Regard oblique. Essais sur la perception (Brussels: La Lettre volée, 2013), pp. 93, 97, 98-100, repr. p. 95. |
| • | G.L. Marcone, “Parole nel vuoto?”, in Titolo 4, n.s., no. 8 (Perugia), Summer-Autumn, 2014, repr. p. 5. |
| • | E. Trincherini, Giulio Paolini. Delfo (IV), 1997. In collezione 2 (Turin-Mantua: Fondazione Giulio e Anna Paolini and Corraini Edizioni, 2015), pp. 26, 32, col. repr. p. 28. |
| • | Giulio Paolini. A come Accademia, exhibition catalogue, Rome, Accademia Nazionale di San Luca (Rome: Gangemi Editore, 2023), repr. p. 165 (exhibition view Milan 1979). |
