Tout se tient, 1989
GPO-0641
Collage on velvet display, smoky plexiglas sheet and case
27 x 27 x 27 cm
Fondazione Giulio e Anna Paolini, Turin
Gift of the artist, 25 October 2012, archive no. GPO-0641
A dark blue velvet jewelry bust arranged inside a dark plexiglas case is associated with the images of the nine planets in the solar system joined to form a necklace. The title – borrowed from linguistics, designating a whole in which all the parts are coherent and interrelated1 – alludes to celestial iconography, representing the model of perfection where everything is complete par excellence.
The same theme was developed in two later variants, one produced during the same year (GPO-0655), and the other dated 1998 (GPO-0809), which are distinguished for the different "jewel" evoked on the necklace bust.
1 The locution comes from the phrase “Chaque fait linguistique fait partie d’un ensemble où tout se tient” (every linguistic fact is part of a whole in which everything is connected to everything else), varyingly attributed to Antoine Meillet and to Ferdinand de Saussure.
Title from a sentence variously ascribed to Antoine Meillet and to Ferdinand de Saussure (“Chaque fait linguistique fait partie d’un ensemble où tout se tient”).
| 1989 | Paris, Galerie Yvon Lambert, Giulio Paolini, 15 April - 18 May. |
| • | F. Poli, Giulio Paolini (Turin: Lindau, 1990), col. repr. no. 141. |
| • | Giulio Paolini al Palazzo della Ragione, exhibition catalogue, Padua, Salone del Palazzo della Ragione (Milan: Fabbri Editori, 1995), repr. p. 39. |
| • | M. Disch, Giulio Paolini. Catalogo ragionato 1960-1999, vol. 2 (Milan: Skira editore, 2008), cat. no. 641 p. 659, col. repr. |
