Cythère, 1983
GPO-0523
Colour photo print, fractured glass sheet, plaster cast, plexiglas plinth
Photo print 50 x 50 cm, cast h 63 cm, plinth 80 x 50 x 50 cm, overall dimensions 145 x 50 x 50 cm
Signed, titled, dated, and numbered on the verso of the photo print: “Giulio Paolini / Cythère / 1983 / [edition number]”
The work was executed in a numbered edition of three.
| 1/3 [?] | Private collection, Zurich |
| 2/3 | Private collection, Geneva |
| 3/3 | Present whereabouts unknown |
The plaster cast of the wings of a classical sculpture is placed at the centre of a broken glass sheet – corresponding to the epicentre of the fragmentation – which holds down the reproduction of several pieces of plaster against the background of a sea at dusk.
The work can be related to a group of homonymous works, made between 1983 and 1994 (GPO-0483, GPO-0491, GPO-0503, GPO-0838, GPO-0522, GPO-0560, GPO-0575, GPO-0591, GPO-0634, GPO-0640, GPO-0675, GPO-0721), which are linked by the same basic theme evoked by the title. Cythera is the mythical island where Aphrodite (Venus for the Romans) was born. Since the beginning she has inspired artists and poets to formulate the inexorable albeit unappeasable desire to set sail towards the island of beauty, the ideal destination, a notoriously unreachable one. The French title amplifies the resonance of the idyllic echo, causing the painting by Jean-Antoine Watteau, L’Embarquement pour Cythère (1717), as well as some of the lines by Charles Baudelaire and Paul Verlaine, to resound.1
1 Cf. Charles Baudelaire, Voyage à Cythère, 1855 (in Les fleurs du Mal); Paul Verlaine, Cythère, 1869 (in Fêtes galantes).
| 1984-85 | Zurich, Galerie Annemarie Verna, In exitum cuiusdam, December 1984 - January 1985; edition 1/3. |
| 1987 | Meymac, Centre d’art contemporain, Abbaye Saint-André, Les années 70. Les Années Mémoire. Archéologie du savoir et de l’être, 11 July - 27 September, cited in the checklist of exhibited works p. 149, repr. p. 103; edition 2/3. |
| 1988 | Munich, Haus der Kunst, Mythos Italien. Wintermärchen Deutschland, 24 March - 29 May, cited in the checklist of exhibited works no. 164 p. 285, repr. p. 253; edition 2/3. |
| • | G. Paolini, Suspense. Breve storia del vuoto in tredici stanze (Florence: Hopeful Monster editore, 1988), p. 177. |
| • | Neoclassico. L’attualità: arte, architettura, design, exhibition catalogue, Trieste, Civico Museo Revoltella, Galleria d’Arte Moderna (Venice: Marsilio Editori, 1990), repr. p. 8. |
| • | M. Unterdörfer, Die Rezeption der Antike in der Postmoderne: der Gipsabguss in der italienischen Kunst der siebziger und achtziger Jahre (Weimar: VDG Verlag und Datenbank für Geisteswissenschaften, 1998), p. 173, cat. no. 47 p. 144. |
| • | M. Disch, Giulio Paolini. Catalogo ragionato 1960-1999, vol. 2 (Milan: Skira editore, 2008), cat. no. 523 p. 535, repr. (erroneously dated “1984” and with incorrect indication of the edition details). |
