Hermaphrodito, 1982
GPO-0475
Hermaphroditus
Photo emulsion on canvas
137 x 204 cm (two parts 137 x 102 cm each)
Titled, signed, and dated on the verso of the second canvas, upper stretcher bar: “Hermaphrodito Giulio Paolini 1982”
Present whereabouts unknown
Against the backdrop of an upside-down reproduction of the field of ruins of the Library of Pergamum, a paradoxical game of views depicts two columns of the Canopus of Villa Hadrian upholding a sky exploded into pieces, and the Wounded Amazon in the role of the caryatid of the Sleeping Hermaphroditus, suspended on the horizon line between Earth and sky, in analogy with the androgynous nature of the figure.
The work is part of a series of nine works, made between 1981 and 1982, in which each time the reproduction of the antique sculpture cited in the title is added to the landscape of ruins (GPO-0451, from GPO-0470 to GPO-0477). The group of works is related to the collages made in the same year for a book co-authored with René Denizot for the Galerie Yvon Lambert (De bouche à oreille / Hearsay, Paris 1982).
• Wounded Amazon, Roman copy from the Imperial Age of the 5th century BC original, marble, h 202 cm, Musei Capitolini, Rome; reproduction from Roloff Beny Interprets in Photographs Pleasure of Ruins by Rose Macaulay (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1977), p. 211 (“Tivoli Vecchio, Italy, The Canopus of Hadrian’s Villa”).
• Sleeping Hermaphroditus, 2nd century AD Roman copy of a 2nd century BC original, marble, Musée du Louvre, Paris; reproduction from Francis Haskell, Nicholas Penny, Taste and the Antique: The Lure of Classical Sculpture 1500-1900 (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1982), p. 234, fig. 120 (“Hermaphrodite”).
• Image of the ruins from Rose Macaulay, The Pleasure of Ruins (London: Thames and Hudson, 1977), p. 72.
| • | M. Disch, Giulio Paolini. Catalogo ragionato 1960-1999, vol. 1 (Milan: Skira editore, 2008), cat. no. 475 p. 487, repr. |
| • | B. Cinelli, “Il grande gioco dell’arte”, in Teatro di Mnemosine. Giulio Paolini d’après Watteau, exhibition catalogue, Lugano, Spazio -1 Collezione Giancarlo e Danna Olgiati (Bellinzona: Edizioni Casagrande, 2015), pp. 63, 65, repr. p. 64. |
| • | S.M.S. Cammarata, “Strappare una foto. Le Cariatidi di Giulio Paolini”, in Studi di scultura. Età moderna e contemporanea 6, no. 6 (Naples), 2024, pp. 280, 285, repr. p. 281. |
