Del bello intelligibile. Parte quarta: “Inedito”, 1978-81

Del bello intelligibile is the general title of a cycle comprising five works, made between 1978 and 1982 (GPO-0401, GPO-0402, GPO-0403, GPO-0448, GPO-0467). Each work includes a specific number of lithographs printed in gold and placed in gilded frames, each of which repeats the same mosaic of minuscule reproductions, marked each time, however, by a different caption, written in pencil and referring each time to one of the small images that make it up, so that all together the inscriptions recompose the photographic mosaic in words. the reproductions and the number of framed prints change, according to the number of units that make up the mosaic.
Inspired by the yearning for a sublime register of the universal itinerary of art history,1 Del bello intelligibile breaks up the vision of the work in a multitude of illegible images, in a scenography of golden reflections. “Gold recalls the mythical object, it inscribes the sublime; it is the elementary indication of the homage to the unfathomable that tends towards the absolute”.2 And in regard to the intelligibility of beauty – the title of the cycle comes from Plotinus (Enneads, V: 8) – Paolini writes: “Intelligibility is a window through which the work of art looks but that then seems to partially close immediately afterwards or at least not open completely”.3
The installation varies depending on the exhibition space and it contemplates the totality or even only a part of the framed elements. In the first presentation of Del bello intelligibile in Paris in 1978, Paolini placed together the components of the first three parts of the cycle so that they formed the frieze of an ideal temple, evoked by a series of antique columns, expressed on the wall in a life-size image (the installation was repeated using a different number of elements in Turin in 1981 and in Stuttgart in 1986). On other occasions he alternated the framed prints with linear rectangles of the same size, so as to compose a discontinuous horizontal sequence at the top of the wall (Charleroi 1986) or else a pattern filling the entire wall with empty spaces in between (Villeurbanne 1984). Two alternative display forms involved components arranged so that they formed large empty frames (Bielefeld and Wuppertal 1982) or else integrated with rectangles drawn here and there, some of which inside and others outside the frames (Kassel 1982).
In the fourth part of the Del bello intelligibile cycle, the mosaic that is repeated in the thirty-two prints reproduces the bibliographical pages of the volume Arti figurative e linguaggi.4 Each time, the composite image is marked by the title of a work listed in the bibliography. The title alludes to the "unpublished" aspect that the assemblage of already published pages that have been rendered illegible produces.

1 G. Paolini in conversation with B. Corà (4 February 1996) in Dopopaesaggio. Figure e misure del giardino, edited by M. Scotini and L. Vecere (Siena: Associazione Culturale Castello di Santa Maria Novella and Maschietto & Musolino, 1996), p. 96. The idea of the list and above all of a "temple" of painting from every era harkens back to Idea del tempio della Pittura by G.P. Lomazzo (1590), which Paolini was interested in at the time. As concerns the theme of the list of works see also the cycle Idem (GPO-0244, GPO-0245, GPO-0261, GPO-0265, GPO-0296, GPO-0335).
2 G. Paolini interviewed by C. Grenier, in Flash Art 3 (Milan, French edition), Spring, 1984, p. 40; republished in Giulio Paolini. La voce del pittore – Scritti e interviste 1965-1995, edited by M. Disch (Lugano: ADV Publishing House, 1995), p. 189, with incorrect details in the bibliographical source.
3 G. Paolini, La verità in quattro righe e novantacinque voci (Turin: Giulio Einaudi editore, 1996), p. 103 (under “Intelligibilità”).
4 O. Calabrese, Arti figurative e linguaggio (Florence: Guaraldi Editore, 1977), pp. 144-155. The pages chosen are taken from the chapter entitled “Le tendenze attuali”.