Ritratto dell’artista come modello, 1980
GPO-0433
Portrait of the Artist as a Model
Pencil on reversed canvas and on wall, plaster cast
Canvas 220 x 180 cm, overall dimensions variable
EFG Art Collection
• The work must be installed on a white wall (or in any case on a wall whose colour is neutral or very light hued), deprived of any architectural interference, that is, without windows or doors or other types of openings or disturbing elements. The surface of the wall must be regular and suited to hosting the drawing made in pencil.
• The dimensions of the wall must be about h 350-400 cm x 600-700 cm. Other dimensions that may be much smaller or much larger must be verified with the artist beforehand.
• The work must be installed by the artist’s assistant.
An overturned canvas, contained in the in the wall drawing of a room in perspective, is propped up against a plaster cast of the head of Praxiteles' Hermes, so that it appears to be held by the half-hidden figure, whose hands drawn on the stretcher are all that we see.
The figure holding a canvas in front of itself constitutes a declared (self-)portrait by the artist, while the cast of the classical sculpture represents the model par excellence of any portrait.
“Two faces in one, the artist is his model: by dint of chasing after it, of pursuing an ideal model, the artist ends up assuming its likeness",1 the artist remarks. "The work stages a paradox, a switching of roles, a reversal of the parts... and it admits or even suggests at least two different readings and crossed interpretations. At the centre of the wall, a figure (we can glimpse his forehead and the impression left by his hand on the stretcher, in part figure and in part statue: the artist or the model?) seems intent on observing something… Vice versa, in a sort of counterfield, we too (viewers?) find ourselves looking at something we cannot see. However, we can clearly distinguish, one by one, the different elements in question, the role play (the artist, the model, the work, and we ourselves who look at it), which allow us to consider in turn the image that we can only, indeed, imagine".2
The same theme was developed in two other variants, one made during the same year (GPO-0434) and the other dated 1981 (GPO-0445).
1 G. Paolini in conversation with M. Disch (2004), in M. Disch, Giulio Paolini. Catalogo ragionato 1960-1999, vol. 1 (Milan: Skira editore, 2008), cat. no. 433 p. 444.
2 G. Paolini, unpublished note written on the occasion of the exhibition of the work at the Museo Cantonale d'Arte, Lugano, in May 2001.
Praxiteles, Hermes and the Infant Dionysos, 350-330 BC, marble, h 215 cm, Archaeological Museum, Olympia.
| 1980 | Rome, Galleria Ugo Ferranti, Giulio Paolini. Ritratto dell’artista come modello, from 18 November. |
| 1981 | Rome, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, Arte e Critica 1981, 29 July - 4 October, repr. p. 13 (first state), entry by M. Bandini p. 12. |
| 1986-87 | Rivoli, Castello di Rivoli, Markus Lüpertz, Giulio Paolini: figure, colonne, finestre, 19 December 1986 - 29 March 1987, cited in the checklist of exhibited works no. 49 p. 117, not repr. |
| 1994 | Amiens, Musée de Picardie, Le modèle, le double, l’identique, 25 June - 16 October, cited in the checklist of exhibited works p. 45, not repr. |
| 2001 | Lugano, Museo Cantonale d’Arte, Oggi per domani. Cinque artisti contemporanei nella Collezione BSI, 18 May - 2 September. |
| 2018-19 | Milan, Fondazione Carriero, Giulio Paolini. Del Bello ideale, 26 October 2018 -10 February 2019, col. repr. vol. 1 pp. 126-127, 128-129 (exhibition views), 172. |
| • | G. Paolini in conversation with M. Disch (2004), in M. Disch, Giulio Paolini. Catalogo ragionato 1960-1999 (Milan: Skira editore, 2008), cat. no. 433 p. 444. |
| • | Giulio Paolini. Werke und Schriften 1960-1980 (Lucerne: Kunstmuseum Luzern, 1981), repr. n. pag. (exhibition view Rome 1980; first state). |
| • | F. Poli, in Giulio Paolini, exhibition catalogue, Milan, Studio Marconi, 1984, n. pag., not repr.; republished as “L’io dell’artista, l’io della pittura”, in Id., Giulio Paolini (Turin: Lindau, 1990), p. 18, not repr. |
| • | M. Disch, Giulio Paolini. Catalogo ragionato 1960-1999, vol. 1 (Milan: Skira editore, 2008), cat. no. 433 p. 444, col. repr. (exhibition view Lugano 2001). |
| • | R. Ferrario, Giulio Paolini. Un viaggio a distanza (Busto Arsizio: Nomos Edizioni, 2009), pp. 96, 101, col. repr. p. 97. |
| • | T. Migliore, “Ritratti ‘portratti’. Giulio Paolini e l’identikit dell’artista”, in L’immagine che siamo. Ritratto e soggettivitˆ nell’estetica contemporanea, edited by M.G. Di Monte, M. Di Monte and H. de Riedmatten (Rome: Carocci editore, 2014), pp. 129-130, repr. |
| • | M.E. Giacomelli, “Lugano, il LAC e la memoria. Intervista con Giulio Paolini”, in Artribune on-line, 9 September 2015. |
| • | A. Soldaini, G. Paolini, “In dialogo”, in Giulio Paolini. A come Accademia, exhibition catalogue, Rome, Accademia Nazionale di San Luca (Rome: Gangemi Editore, 2023), p. 91, col. repr. pp. 92 (exhibition view Lugano 2001), 285 (exhibition view Milan 2018). |
