Due personaggi in cerca d’autore, 1996
GPO-0781
Two Characters in Search of an Author
Primed canvases, stretcher, unstretched primed canvas, clip-on spotlights, pencil on primed canvas and on wall
Stretcher 350 x 500 cm, canvas with drawing 175 x 250 cm, overall dimensions 350 x 700 cm
Collection of the artist
A perspective room drawn directly onto the wall contains two trapezoidal canvases, one of which is seen from the recto, the other from the verso, simulating two paintings hanging on the side walls of that virtual room. A third central canvas evokes a painting on the back wall. On this canvas, a pencil drawing mirrors the layout of the room, which is inhabited, however, by two figures standing opposite each another, each looking at the painting in front of them (two smaller trapezoidal canvases, reduced in proportion, are applied to the canvas). The large stretcher propped up against the wall, its canvas cloth wrapped around the top border with six clip-on spotlights mounted directly on the bars, acts as a “curtain” raised on the stage.
The title, which alludes to a famous play by Luigi Pirandello (Sei personaggi in cerca d’autore [Six Characters in Search of an Author], 1921), refers to the doubling of the figure of the author and the painting, which, paradoxically, remain two unknowns: the painting “without an author” evoked by both the recto/verso canvases and the stretcher-curtain, remains precluded from our gaze, while the two stand-ins replace the author who has left the stage.
Figure from Antonio Sandre, Il costume nei tempi (Turin: Scuola Taglio Moderno, 1961), p. 268, fig. 299 (”Da ‘Minister’s Gazette of fashions’, 1925-30”), with the transformation of the original jacket into a tailcoat.
| 1997 | Rivoli, Castello di Rivoli Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Sipario / Staged Art. Balla, De Chirico, Savinio, Picasso, Paolini, Cucchi, 20 February - 25 May, cited in the checklist of exhibited works p. 252, col. repr. pp. 164-165. |
| • | M. Disch, Giulio Paolini. Catalogo ragionato 1960-1999, vol. 2 (Milan: Skira editore, 2008), cat. no. 781 p. 795, col. repr. |
| • | Giulio Paolini, exhibition catalogue, Rome, MACRO Museo d'Arte Contemporanea Roma and London, Whitechapel Gallery (Rome: Quodlibet Edizioni, 2014), repr. p. 25. |
| • | Paolini. I Grandi illustrati del Corriere della Sera. Arte contemporanea – I protagonisti 8, edited by F. Gualdoni (Milan: RCS MediaGroup S.p.a., 2022), p. 70, col. repr. p. 71. |
