L’autore? Un attore!, 1986
GPO-0582
The Author? An Actor!
Pencil on primed canvas, easel, plaster cast, photographic reproduction, primed canvases
Four canvases 200 x 300 cm each, sixteen canvases 40 x 60 cm each, cast 77 x 100 x 30 cm, overall dimensions site-specific
Glenstone Foundation, Potomac, Maryland
• 1986, Rivoli, Castello di Rivoli: the parallelepiped in the middle consisted of a wooden structure that bore the design in perspective of the room only on the front side, and the frieze along the four sides of the exhibition space was defined by twenty canvases. The front of the temple was penetrated by a black and white photographic reproduction of the exhibition space, torn into large fragments, some of which ruined on the ground at the foot of the easel.
• 1987, Nantes, Musée des Beaux-Arts: the temple contains, between its columns, a dishevelled men's outfit.
The current configuration of the work dates to the exhibition design conceived for the group exhibition in 1989 at the Ydessa Hendeles Art Foundation in Toronto.
Sixteen canvases, alternatively seen from the recto and the verso, and arranged at regular intervals, constitute a continuous frieze along the upper limit of the four sides of the exhibition room. At the centre of the room are four large canvases also seen from the recto or the verso, leaning one against the other to form a parallelepiped that imitates the proportions of the room itself. Three sides of this volume represent a view in perspective of the empty room, while on the fourth side the drawing also reproduces the frieze of the small canvases. Before this side of the parallelepiped is the plaster cast of the front of a Corinthian temple, set down on an easel, with a colour reproduction of the solar system held between the cast and the easel.
The title implies a word game between the author, the bearer, and the actor (three words – autore, latore, attore – that are phonetically similar in Italian): for Paolini, the author, like the actor, is simply a bearer or interpreter of something that pre-exists or transcends him (of an absolute dimension evoked by way of the temple and the solar system). It is someone who limits himself to arranging the scene, accentuating the space assigned to the manifestation of the work (the exhibition space, traced on the central canvases), and announcing a representation, suggested by the recto/verso canvases that imply a 360-degree turn around the hypothetical face of a painting.
| 1986-87 | Rivoli, Castello di Rivoli, Markus Lüpertz, Giulio Paolini: figure, colonne, finestre, 19 December 1986 - 29 March 1987, cited in the checklist of exhibited works no. 62 p. 118, col. repr. p. 121 (exhibition view). |
| 1987 | Nantes, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Giulio Paolini, 16 October - 15 December, cited in the checklist of exhibited works no. 1 p. 67, repr. pp. 12, 15, 18, 29, 70 (exhibition views). |
| 1989 | Toronto, Ydessa Hendeles Art Foundation, Giulio Paolini, from 11 March, no catalogue. |
| • | G. Paolini, Suspense. Breve storia del vuoto in tredici stanze (Florence: Hopeful Monster editore, 1988), repr. p. 41 (exhibition view Rivoli 1986-87). |
| • | F. Poli, Giulio Paolini (Turin: Lindau, 1990), repr. no. 157 (exhibition view Rivoli 1986-87). |
| • | Giulio Paolini. Il “Teatro” dell’opera, exhibition catalogue, Pesaro, Galleria Franca Mancini (Ravenna: Agenzia Editoriale Essegi, 1991), repr. p. 37 (exhibition view Rivoli 1986-87). |
| • | Oltre la linea dell’avanguardia. Architettura, testo, contesto, edited by E. Calvi (Milan: Guerini Studio, 1992), repr. p. 27 (exhibition view Rivoli 1986-87). |
| • | F. Poli, “Giulio Paolini”, in Giulio Paolini al Palazzo della Ragione, exhibition catalogue, Padua, Salone del Palazzo della Ragione (Milan: Fabbri Editori, 1995), p. 31, not repr. |
| • | M. Disch, “L'atto espositivo. Appunti sul lavoro di Giulio Paolini”, in Giulio Paolini. Von heute bis gestern / Da oggi a ieri, exhibition catalogue, Graz, Neue Galerie im Landesmuseum Joanneum (Ostfildern-Ruit: Cantz Verlag, 1998), pp. 127, 129, repr. p. 125 (exhibition view Nantes 1987). |
| • | D. Soutif, “Dare voce all’opera”, in Giulio Paolini. Da oggi a ieri, exhibition catalogue, Turin, GAM Galleria Civica d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea (Turin: Hopefulmonster, 1999), pp. 22-23, repr. p. 22 (exhibition view Rivoli 1986-87). |
| • | J.M. Poinsot, Quand l’œuvre a lieu. L’art exposé et ses récits autorisés (Geneva-Villeurbanne: Mamco, Institut d’art contemporain and Art Édition, 1999), repr. p. 295 (exhibition view Nantes 1987). |
| • | F. Poli, “Ricerche minimaliste e analitiche”, in Arte contemporanea. Le ricerche internazionali dalla fine degli anni '50 a oggi, edited by Id. (Milan: Mondadori Electa, 2003), p. 113, not repr. |
| • | F. Poli, La scultura del Novecento (Bari: Editori Laterza, 2006), pp. 181-182, not repr. |
| • | M. Disch. Giulio Paolini. Catalogo ragionato 1960-1999, vol. 2 (Milan: Skira editore, 2008), cat. no. 582 pp. 596-597, repr. (exhibition views Rivoli 1986 and Nantes 1987), and col. repr. (exhibition view Toronto 1989). |
| • | F. Poli, F. Bernardelli, Mettere in scena l’arte contemporanea. Dallo spazio dell’opera allo spazio intorno all’opera (Milan: Johan & Levi, 2016), p. 44, not repr. |
| • | Giulio Paolini. A come Accademia, exhibition catalogue, Rome, Accademia Nazionale di San Luca (Rome: Gangemi Editore, 2023), col. repr. p. 201 (exhibition view Nantes 1987). |
