Contemplator enim, 1991
GPO-0681
Pencil on primed canvas, on reversed canvas and on wall, plaster casts, plexiglas case
Two canvases 170 x 130 cm each, two casts 39 x 138 x 5 cm each, plexiglas case 71 x 71 x 35 cm, overall dimensions variable
Siegfried Weishaupt Collection
• 1991, Rivoli, Castello di Rivoli: the availability of a very long wall led the artist to integrate the perspective drawing at the two ends with two squares of the same size as the plexiglas case. The work was shown together with Hic et nunc (Le Radeau de la Méduse) (GPO-0680), so that the case received the beam of light emitted by the projector belonging to that work.
• 1991, New York, SteinGladstone Gallery: the way the work was displayed faithfully reproduced the original one in Rivoli.
The pencil drawing on the wall locates the two canvases – one of which seen from the recto, the other from the verso, and each of which topped by the plaster cast of a classical tympanum – in the perspective drawing of a room. Both of the canvases in turn feature the outline of a spatial squaring, as if they were two doors facing a further space.1 Between the two canvases, in the area corresponding to the centre of the wall and the vanishing point of the perspective drawing, is an empty plexiglas case.
The words in Latin in the title, which mean “behold thus”, are from a passage in Lucretius’ De rerum natura, in which the gaze is invited to contemplate the movements of the atoms caught in the beam created by the rays of sunlight that have filtered into a dark room.2
With the complicity of the title, the motif of the empty room indicates a space that cannot be crossed, reserved for the theatre of images rather than for the world scene. “By no accident – Paolini says – the two doors that actually delimit the room are represented by two canvases, or rather by a single canvas that, viewed from the recto and the verso, presents itself as open and closed at the same time”.3 The empty stage, from which the author has declaredly withdrawn, invites the viewer to behold the silent scene that is a prelude to the manifestation of a possible and unpredictable apparition in the place assigned to the representation, characterized by the artifices and the trompe l'oeil distinctive of its dimension.
The same theme was developed in a variant from the same year (GPO-0683), as well as in a further version conceived during the same year for Christian Stein (GPO-0684). Generally speaking, the title and iconography of Contemplator enim constitute a formal and conceptual area distinctive of the early 1990s (cf. among others, the artist's publication entitled Contemplator enim [Florence: Hopefulmonster editore, 1991]).
1 The arrangement is based on the entrance hallway of the artist’s own home, in which the two doors at the back face the spaces of the living room.
2 Lucretius, De rerum natura, Book II, line 114 ff.
3 G. Paolini in conversation with M. Disch (2005), in M. Disch, Giulio Paolini. Catalogo ragionato 1960-1999, vol. 2 (Milan: Skira editore, 2008), cat. no. 681 p. 694.
Title from Lucretius, De rerum natura, Book II, lines 114-115 (“Contemplator enim, cum solis lumina cumque inserti fundunt radii per opaca domorum” / ” Behold whenever the sun’s light and the rays, let in, pour down across dark halls of houses”).
| 1991 | Rivoli, Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Anteprima 1. Giulio Paolini, 4 May - 30 June, repr. pp. 13, 17 (exhibition views), on pp. 10-11 reproduction of a scale drawing of the work, referred to in the text by G. Verzotti pp. 5-6, 8. |
| 1991 | New York, SteinGladstone Gallery, Giulio Paolini, 26 October - 21 December. |
| • | G. Paolini in the interview with M. Bourel, “Giulio Paolini, contemplateur donc”, in Art Press 164 (Paris), December, 1991, pp. 18-19; republished in Italian in Giulio Paolini. La voce del pittore – Scritti e interviste 1965-1995, edited by M. Disch (Lugano: ADV Publishing House, 1995), pp. 258-59. |
| • | G. Paolini in conversation with M. Disch (2005), in M. Disch, Giulio Paolini. Catalogo ragionato 1960-1999 (Milan: Skira editore, 2008), cat. no. 681 p. 694. |
| • | M. Bourel, “Giulio Paolini, contemplateur donc”, in Art Press 164 (Paris), December, 1991, repr. pp. 16-17 (exhibition view Rivoli 1991). |
| • | D. Scudero, “È il mondo che gira”, in Opening 22 (Rome), March, 1994, repr. n. pag. (exhibition view Rivoli 1991). |
| • | M. Disch, “Giulio Paolini. Hors-d’oeuvre”, in Giulio Paolini. La voce del pittore – Scritti e interviste 1965-1995, edited by M. Disch (Lugano: ADV Publishing House, 1995), pp. 96-98, 100, repr. no. 39 (exhibition view Rivoli 1991). |
| • | Castello di Rivoli 20 anni d’arte contemporanea (Rivoli-Milan: Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea and Skira editore, 2005), col. repr. pp. 140-141 (exhibition view Rivoli 1991). |
| • | A. Zevi, Peripezie del dopoguerra nell’arte italiana (Turin: Giulio Einaudi editore, 2005), p. 366, not repr. |
| • | M. Disch, Giulio Paolini. Catalogo ragionato 1960-1999, vol. 2 (Milan: Skira editore, 2008), cat. no. 681 pp. 694-695, repr. (exhibition view Rivoli 1991). |
| • | Collezione Christian Stein. Una storia dell'arte italiana / A History of Italian Art (Valencia-Lugano-Milan: IVAM Institut Valencià d'Art Modern, Museo Cantonale d'Arte and Mondadori Electa, 2010), col. repr. p. 317 (exhibition view New York 1991). |
| • | Imaginae 1960-1990, exhibition catalogue, Asti, Fondo Giov-Anna Piras, 2011, repr. n. pag. (exhibition view Rivoli 1991). |
| • | Ragione e furore. Lucrezio nell’Italia contemporanea, edited by F. Citti and D. Pellacani (Bologna: Edizioni Pendragon, 2020), pp. LIV-LV, 15-17, col. repr. no. 73. |
