Casa di Lucrezio, 1981-82

The theme of the Casa di Lucrezio was developed in a total of nine variants made between 1981 and 1984 (from GPO-0452 to GPO-0458, GPO-0481, GPO-0517). The common denominator between the works is the fragmentation of a plaster tablet bearing a drawing of a labyrinth carved on a pillar in Lucretius’s house in Pompeii,1 matched with a series of possible semblances of the Latin poet, evoked by the plaster cast of a classical head and a piece of draped cloth. The cast of the ancient carving is broken each time into an increasing number of fragments, thereby accentuating its labyrinthine component.2. The gradual subdivision of the drawing also determines a complementary multiplication of the poet’s faces, which along with the various positions of the cast and the variations in the colour of the cloths gradually expands the question as to the possibility of determining an ungraspable figure.
The eighth version of the Casa di Lucrezio is distinguished from the others by the choice of the cast – in this case a Roman head, inspired by the four busts of the Salle des Statues in the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Dijon, where the work was exhibited for the first time – and by the cloths in colours ranging from white to black. The four episodes making up this variant are installed so that the complementary pairs of the casts, respectively whole and broken, are diagonally opposite each other. Counter-clockwise they are as follows: 1. a whole cast wrapped in a white drape up to the eye level, set down on the plinth together with a fragment of the labyrinthine carving; 2. the pieces of a broken up head wrapped in light grey cloth and set down on the plinth; 3. a whole cast and a portion of the drawing placed on top of the plinth, while an anthracite cloth is arranged on the ground; 4. a cast of the head exploded on the ground, a piece and a fragment of the plaster tablet wrapped in black cloth set atop the plinth.
In the artist's words: “The intentionality of this work lies in evoking – and not representing – the idea of the continuous becoming of a possible space, inhabited by poetry. The title leads to another place, the casts point to their place of provenance, the drawing of the labyrinth evokes not just another place – the House of Lucretius – but also the symbolic figure of the labyrinth. These are all various elements which are meant to subtract themselves from vision to instead suggest a dense void of evocation, the making of space for the chances of imagination that each one of us harbours inside”.3

1 The original drawing with the words “Labyrinthus Hic Habitat Mynotaurus” is from the Enciclopedia Einaudi, vol. 8 (Turin: 1979), p. 12, under “labirinto”, and is described as a labyrinth "on a pillar of the House of Lucretius". The Pompeiian house where the drawing was discovered was actually the domus of the duovir Marcus Lucretius Fronto, and not of the poet Titus Lucretius Carus (cf. G. Sarullo, “Labirinti a Pompei: a proposito di CIL IV 2331”, in Oebalus. Studi sulla Campania nell’Antichità 3 (Rome), 2008, pp. 203-223; I am grateful to Stefano Menichini for this information). On his part, Paolini does not remember whether his association was simply a case of poetic license or an unwitting mistake.
2 The drawing was carved on plaster tablets measuring 35 x 35 cm, which were later shattered.
3 G. Paolini interviewed by F. Pasini, in L’Illustrazione italiana V, no. 24 (Milan), November, 1985, p. 21. On the labyrinth as the inspiration for the work cf. G. Paolini interviewed by C. Grenier, in Flash Art 3 (Milan, French edition), Spring, 1984, p. 41.