Le décor change (Le Temple de la Gloire), 1983-84
GPO-0510
Golden pillow, crumpled photographic reproduction
12 x 58 x 43 cm
Private collection, Genoa
Le Temple de la Gloire is the general subtitle of a work conceived in 1983 and reformulated in overall nine variants (GPO-0490, GPO-0492, GPO-0493, GPO-0500, GPO-0508, GPO-0510, GPO-0526, GPO-0559, GPO-0808). A constant element is the golden pilllow, on which Paolini each time proposes an "offer", while the title quotes a phrase or a verse from the opera libretto of Le Temple de la Gloire (1745) by Jean-Philippe Rameau. Depending on the exhibition itself, the arrangement of the pillow also varies, at times integrated with complementary elements.
The work is based on the contrast between the eloquence of the elegant pillow, evoking a solemn ritual – in a dimension that is outside of the flow of time – and the ephemeral futility of the object offered, which is prosaic and inconsistent.
In this sixth variant a colour reproduction of the Apotheosis of Homer (1827) by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres is crumpled up on a pillow, so as to leave visible Molière's gesture of "offering" as he holds a comedy mask (in the foreground at the lower right of the painting).
• Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Homère déifié, dit aussi L'apothéose d'Homère, 1827, oil on canvas, 386 x 512 cm, Musée du Louvre, Paris.
• Subtitle from the opéra-ballet by Jean-Philippe Rameau, Le Temple de la Gloire, 1745.
| 1984 | Zurich, Galerie Annemarie Verna, Giulio Paolini, 26 April - 26 May. |
| 1984 (?) | Perugia, Rocca Paolina, Palazzo dei Priori e Palazzo del Capitano del Popolo, Attraversamenti. Linee della nuova arte contemporanea italiana, September-November, repr. p. 102. |
| 1985 | Paris, Galerie Maeght Lelong, Giulio Paolini. Melanconia ermetica, 14 May - 29 June, cited in the checklist of exhibited works no. 7 p. 32, col. repr. p. 25. |
| • | Coerenza in coerenza. Dall’Arte Povera al 1984, exhibition catalogue, Turin, Mole Antonelliana (Milan: Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, 1984), repr. p. 89. |
| • | Italia Aperta, exhibition catalogue, Madrid, Fundación Caja de Pensiones, 1985, repr. p. 53 (incompletely dated “1983”). |
| • | M. Scholz-Hänsel, “Das imaginäre Museum Giulio Paolinis”, in Giulio Paolini, exhibition catalogue, Stuttgart, Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, 1986, vol. 2, p. 10, repr. p. 7 (dated “1983-85” in relation to the installation in Paris 1985). |
| • | 50 rue de Varenne, Italian-French supplement to Nuovi Argomenti 20 (Paris-Milan), December, 1986, col. repr. on cover (dated “1983-85” in reference to the installation in Paris 1985). |
| • | M. Disch, Giulio Paolini. Catalogo ragionato 1960-1999, vol. 2 (Milan: Skira editore, 2008), cat. no. 510 p. 521, col. repr. (with incorrect dimensions of the base “80 x 45 x 45 cm”). |
