L’Ecrivain, 1980
GPO-0436
Photo print, primed canvas, stage costume
Canvas 60 x 40 cm, photo print 30 x 24 cm
Private collection, Turin
The work should be installed in the corner of a room, as though it were a solitary figure off to the side. It is also possible to install the work by propping it up against a wall, but always in a position off to the side, never at the centre of a wall or a room.
• 1981, Turin, Galleria Stein: installation in a corner of the room (exhibited together with Incognita, GPO-0438).
A canvas, which the artist "dressed" with an eighteenth-century jacket, features a sentence penned by Jaquet-Droz's Draughtsman, an automaton housed at the Musée d’art et d’histoire in Neuchâtel: “Soyez les / bienvenus / à neuchâtel [sic]”.
L’Ecrivain belongs to a trilogy of characters (GPO-0435, GPO-0436, GPO-0437) which each time feature a mechanical and impersonal sign pinned to their "chest" – an unprimed canvas the size of the artist's first work, Disegno geometrico (GPO-0001).
The theatrical costume that dresses the author's depersonalized "body" underscores a theme that is absolutely central to Paolini's research: the distance of the author, his non-involvement, his extraneousness to the becoming of the work.
Writing from Alfred de Chapuis, Edmond Droz, Les Automates des Jaquet-Droz (Neuchâtel: Musée d’histoire, 1951), p. 16.
| 1981 | Turin, Galleria Christian Stein, Giulio Paolini, from 21 January. |
| • | Giulio Paolini. Werke und Schriften 1960-1980 (Lucerne: Kunstmuseum Luzern, 1981), repr. n. pag. |
| • | Coerenza in coerenza. Dall’Arte Povera al 1984, exhibition catalogue, Turin, Mole Antonelliana (Milan: Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, 1984), repr. p. 164. |
| • | G. Paolini, Suspense. Breve storia del vuoto in tredici stanze (Florence: Hopeful Monster editore, 1988), repr. p. 133. |
| • | M. Disch, Giulio Paolini. Catalogo ragionato 1960-1999, vol. 1 (Milan: Skira editore, 2008), cat. no. 436 p. 446, repr. |
| • | Collezione Christian Stein. Una storia dell'arte italiana / A History of Italian Art (Valencia-Lugano-Milan: IVAM Institut Valencià d'Art Modern, Museo Cantonale d'Arte and Mondadori Electa, 2010), repr. p. 280. |
