Clio, 1977-78
GPO-0377
Pencil on photo canvas and on primed canvas
110 x 240 cm (three parts 110 x 80 cm each)
Signed, titled, and dated on the verso of the third canvas, upper stretcher bar, right: “Giulio Paolini / Clio 1977-78”
Private collection
Unlike the version on paper, the three canvases are placed close together leaving no gaps in between them.
The three photographic canvases placed close together present the drawing of a room seen in perspective, inside which two identical representations of the Muse Clio gaze at each other. The specular juxtaposition is repeated in the canvas in the middle by way of two other proportionally smaller canvases, as if they were paintings hanging on the rear wall of the room.
The iconographic theme was part of the research that distinguished Paolini's output around the mid-1970s, which began with Mimesi (GPO-0283). The crossed gazes of two identical subjects – in turned observed by the viewer's gaze – question the relationship between the work, the viewer, and the representation.
The work is a reproduction on canvas of a previous version on paper, made in 1977 (GPO-0371).
Figure from Thomas Hope, Costumes of the Greeks and Romans (New York: Dover Publications, 1962), plate 109 (”Clio from a statue in the Villa Borghese”).
| • | M. Disch, Giulio Paolini. Catalogo ragionato 1960-1999, vol. 1 (Milan: Skira editore, 2008), cat. no. 377 p. 382, col. repr. (with incomplete technique and incorrect overall dimensions). |
| • | 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. 128, col. repr. p. 138. |
