Le livre à venir, 1971
GPO-0230
Book pages affixed to primed canvas with white drawing pins mounted on plywood panel
20.5 x 26 cm (two parts 20.5 x 13 cm each)
Signed and dated on the verso of the second panel, upper centre: “Giulio Paolini / 1971”
Private collection
The two pages that precede the title-page of Le livre à venir [The Book to Come] (1959) by Maurice Blanchot are pinned to two primed canvases of the exact same size, placed next to each other in the manner of an open book.
“The work appropriates itself of the textual nature of the title, to presume that the 'to come' is as if underpinned by the materiality of the canvas supporting it, beyond the surface that we have the opportunity to see",1 Paolini remarks.
The same theme was formulated in two previous variants, made in 1969 (GPO-0178, GPO-0179).
1 G. Paolini in Giulio Paolini. Le ‘opere a venire’, proceedings of the meeting with the artist on 28 April 1981 (Perugia: Accademia di Belle Arti “Pietro Vannucci”, 1982), p. 12.
Maurice Blanchot, Le livre à venir (Paris: Gallimard, 1959).
| • | G. Paolini in Giulio Paolini. Le “opere a venire”, proceedings of the meeting with the artist, Accademia di Belle Arti “Pietro Vannucci”, Perugia, 28 April 1981 (Perugia: 1982), p. 12. |
| • | G. Paolini, Idem (Turin: Giulio Einaudi editore, 1975), repr. pp. 58-59; new edition (Milan: Electa, 2023), repr. pp. 84-85. |
| • | M. Fagiolo, “Glossario”, in Giulio Paolini (Parma: Università di Parma, Centro Studi e Archivio della Comunicazione, 1976), p. 23, repr. no. 130. |
| • | F. Poli, “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. 230 p. 239, repr. |
| • | A. Cortellessa, “La cornice e le stelle”, in G. Paolini, Idem (Milan: Electa, 2023), p. 132, repr. pp. 84-85. |
