De Pictura, 1979

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De pictura, 1979 Pencil, nails and collage on primed canvas, autograph inscription on reverse side of canvas, torn photographs Nine parts 80 x 120 cm each, overall dimensions 245 x 365 cm Signed, titled and dated on the recto, on the central part: “Giulio Paolini / De pictura / 1979” Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart (acquired in 1980, inv. no. 3366) Nine canvases placed one right next to the other form a large picture made up of 3 x 3 elements reproducing the drawing of a room in perspective with two “paintings” on the side walls: these two paintings are made to seem more life-like by the presence of real nails along the edge that is visible. The room drawn in perspective is inhabited by a person wearing a toga,1 who gazes at the painting hanging on the fourth wall of the virtual room, which we can only see from the verso. The reversed canvas bears the signature, title and date certifying the authenticity of a painting that we cannot see and at the same time of the work we are looking at. In his raised right hand the figure is holding a few photographic fragments of Parnaso (1979) – the profile of the hand is completed by one of the torn details – while other fragments from the same image are strewn about on the floor. While the counter-figure reflects our own gaze before the work, the torn photographs, the reversed canvas and the nails along the sides of the drawn canvases accentuate the diaphragm that separates the ideal perspective of the figure in costume inside the painting from our “blind” gaze, confined to this side of that insurmountable limit. The title is from the famous treatise by Leon Battista Alberti (De pictura, 1435), in which the author was the first to theorize the fundamental principles of the new Renaissance vision, founded on perspectival construction, and its application in painting. Together with the works Parnaso and Liber veritatis, De pictura expresses the theme of the solo exhibition held in 1979 in Milan entitled “Atto unico in tre quadri” [One-act play in three paintings], which marked an important phase in the artists study of the visual act of the author-viewer before the work of art, that is, the “one act” constantly called into play by Paolini. “The three paintings exhibited are a sort of script. In three successive but interchangeable moments I attempted to condense, via the overlapping of the coordinates, the fundamental traces of my work up until today. Each line, each point in the whole goes back over and glimpses, at the same time, at the overall itinerary of a study”.2 This work is the most complete version of a series of variants made between 1977 and 1979. 1 The figure wearing an antique costume is from the volume by T. Hope, Costumes of the Greeks and Romans, New York: Dover, 1962, plate 285 (Paolini used a reversed image of the original). 2 The artist interviewed by A.C. Quintavalle, in “Panorama” (Milan), November, 1979 (reprinted in M. Disch (ed.), Giulio Paolini. La voce del pittore - Scritti e interviste 1965-1995, Lugano: ADV Publishing House, 1995, p. 178). Cf. the record of the exhibition in the “Solo Exhibitions” section of this website. Exhibition chronology and bibliography cf. M. Disch, Giulio Paolini. Catalogo ragionato 1960-1999, Milan: Skira editore, 2008, vol. 2, pp. 966-967, cat. no. 417. © Maddalena Disch .

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