Un segreto, 1969
GPO-0192
A Secret
Photo emulsion on canvas
40 x 80 cm (two parts 40 x 40 cm each)
Signed, titled, and dated on the verso of the first canvas, upper stretcher bar, left: “Giulio Paolini / Un segreto / 1969”
Private collection
The two photographic canvases placed close together reproduce the detail of the date written by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, along with his signature, in the portrait of Philibert Rivière (1804-05).
Enlarged and decontextualized, the date of the Revolutionary French calendar, referred to the 13th year of the Republic and corresponding to 1804, becomes “a secret”, as suggested by the title: a mysterious and unfathomable indication.
Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Philibert Rivière, 1804-05, oil on canvas, 116 x 89 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris.
| 1970 | Lucerne, Kunstmuseum Luzern, Processi di pensiero visualizzati. Junge italienische Avantgarde, 31 May - 5 July, not repr. |
| 1987 | Milan, Galleria Milano, Concettuale in Italia 1965-1972, from 10 December, cited in the checklist of exhibited works p. 17, repr. p. 10. |
| • | G. Paolini in Giulio Paolini, vol. Figures/Intentions (Villeurbanne: Le Nouveau Musée, 1984), p. 25. |
| • | Giulio Paolini, vol. Figures/Intentions (Villeurbanne: Le Nouveau Musée, 1984), repr. p. 14. |
| • | B. Yasar, "‘Hypothesis for an Exhibition’", in “Hypothesis for an Exhibition”, exhibition catalogue, New York, Dominique Lévy Gallery, 2014, p. 37, repr. p. 35. |
| • | M. Disch, Giulio Paolini. Catalogo ragionato 1960-1999, vol. 1 (Milan: Skira editore, 2008), cat. no. 192 p. 205, repr. |
| • | S. Bann, "Apoteosi di Omero. Da Paolini a Ingres", in S. Bann et al., Il passato al presente. In tema 2 (Turin-Mantua: Fondazione Giulio e Anna Paolini and Corraini Edizioni, 2016), p. 130, not repr. |
| • | F. Guzzetti, “'Ich war ein Mann der Institution'”: Jean-Christoph Ammann e Processi di pensiero visualizzati", in Ricerche di storia dell’arte” 132 (Rome) 2020, p. 15, not repr. |
