I Dioscuri, 1982
GPO-0473
The Dioscuri
Photo emulsion on canvas
137 x 204 cm (two parts 137 x 102 cm each)
Private collection, Belgium
The view of the ruins of the Library of Pergamum is contained in the visual field of the sculptural group of Castor and Pollux (also known as the San Ildefonso Group) evoked at the centre through the profile of their shoulders. The Dioscuri separated and viewed from the front are placed to the sides of their empty image, as if to raise the curtain on the point of view that at first was theirs and is now ours.
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).
- Castor and Pollux (The San Ildefonso Group), 1st century AD, marble, h 158 cm, Museo del Prado, Madrid; 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. 175, fig. 90 (“Castor and Pollux”).
• Image of the ruins from Rose Macaulay, The Pleasure of Ruins (London: Thames and Hudson, 1977), p. 72.
| 1983 | Turin, Galleria Christian Stein, Giulio Paolini, 19 January - 1 March. |
| 1984 | Villeurbanne, Le Nouveau Musée, Giulio Paolini, 20 January - 18 March, not repr. |
| 1985-86 | Montreal, Musée d’art contemporain, Giulio Paolini, 7 July - 8 September, touring to: Vancouver, Vancouver Art Gallery, 29 November 1985 - 19 January 1986, same catalogue as for the solo exhibition in Villeurbanne 1984. |
| 1986 | Charleroi, Palais des Beaux-Arts, Giulio Paolini, 15 February - 30 March, same catalogue as for the solo exhibition in Villeurbanne 1984. |
| • | M. Disch, Giulio Paolini. Catalogo ragionato 1960-1999, vol. 1 (Milan: Skira editore, 2008), cat. no. 473 p. 485, repr. |
| • | Giulio Paolini. A come Accademia, exhibition catalogue, Rome, Accademia Nazionale di San Luca (Rome: Gangemi Editore, 2023), repr. p. 179 (exhibition view Villeurbanne 1984). |
