Teresa nella parte di Giovanna d’Arco in prigione (tavola ottica), 1969
GPO-0168
Teresa in the Role of Joan of Arc in Prison (Optical Table)
Photo prints affixed to primed canvases with white drawing pins
Four parts 25 x 20 cm each, overall dimensions 25 x 86 cm
Fondazione Giulio e Anna Paolini, Turin
Gift of Anna Paolini Piva, 25 October 2012, archive no. GPO-0168
Four photographs, pinned to primed canvases of the same size and placed at short intervals from each other, illustrate exaggerated enlargements and reductions of the same subject, in the manner of an eye chart. Thérèse of Lisieux's face reproduced in the third element appears to be lost and far away, almost disappearing (in the second element it is reduced to a miniature) or excessively close up, until it becomes a grainy or even white surface (respectively in the first and last elements).
The portrait, as the title tells us (“Teresa as Joan of Arc in Prison (Eye Chart)”), subtracts itself from our view and remains entrusted to the imagination rather than to a deciphering. In this sense, Tavola ottica is part of a line of research that distinguishes the works produced by the artist in 1969 on the theme of seeing, especially on the partiality of the gaze with respect to an absolute and irreproducible dimension.
The work is a tribute to Carla Lonzi, who – along with her growing involvement in feminism that would soon lead her to abandon her activity as a militant art critic – was especially interested in the figure of Thérèse of Lisieux at the time.1
1 Thérèse Françoise Marie Martin (1873-1897), a nun and a mystic, was active at Lisieux Monastery as a playwright as well. The whole image from which the detail of Thérèse's face was taken reappears in Apoteosi di Omero (GPO-0224), showing Thérèse in the role of Joan of Arc in Prison, seated in a melancholy pose. The detail of the face was reproduced by Carla Lonzi in her Autoritratto; cf. M. Disch, L. Iamurri, "Nota sull’immagine di copertina", in C. Lonzi, Autoritratto (Milan: Et al./Edizioni, 2010), pp. 302-306.
Il volto di santa Teresa di Gesù Bambino, introduction and endnotes by François de Sainte Marie (Milan: Editrice Ancora, 1962), plate 13B.
| 2019 | Il soggetto imprevisto. 1978 Arte e Femminismo in Italia, Milan, FM Centro per l’Arte Contemporanea, 4 April - 26 May, repr. pp. 12-13, referred to in the text by M. Scotini p. 11. |
| • | C. Lonzi, "Itinerario di riflessioni", in M.G. Chinese et al., È già politica (Milan: Scritti di Rivolta Femminile, 1977), pp. 16-17, not repr. |
| • | M. Disch, Giulio Paolini. Catalogo ragionato 1960-1999, vol. 1 (Milan: Skira editore, 2008), cat. no. 168 p. 188, repr. (the tiny image at the center of the second canvas was accidentally cancelled). |
| • | M. Disch, L. Iamurri, "Nota sull'immagine di copertina", in C. Lonzi, Autoritratto (Milan: et al./Edizioni, 2010), pp. 302-306, repr. on cover. |
| • | C. Lonzi, Autoportrait, edited by G. Zapperi (Paris-Zurich: La Maison Rouge and JRP|Ringier, 2012), p. 228, repr. p. 212 (with incorrect cancellation of the tiny image at the center of the second canvas). |
| • | L. Iamurri, "Dell'autenticità. Carla Lonzi, l'arte, gli artisti", in L'immagine tra materiale e virtuale, edited by F. Gallo and C. Zambianchi (Rome: Campisano Editore, 2013), pp. 118-119, not repr. |
| • | L. Iamurri, Un margine che sfugge. Carla Lonzi e l’arte in Italia 1955-1970 (Macerata: Quodlibet, 2016), pp. 10, 206, repr. (with incorrect cancellation of the tiny image at the center of the second canvas). |
| • | I. Bernardi, Giulio Paolini. Opere su carta: un laboratorio gestuale per la percezione dell’immagine (Turin: Prinp Editore, 2017), p. 92, repr. |
| • | L. Iamurri, "Ni pauvreté, ni théâtre: les silences de Carla Lonzi dans Autoritratto", in Les Cahiers su Musée national d’art moderne 143 (Paris), Summer, 2018, p. 31, repr. |
| • | L. Iamurri, Giulio Paolini. Teresa nella parte di Giovanna d’Arco in prigione (tavola ottica), 1969. In collezione 5 (Turin-Mantua: Fondazione Giulio e Anna Paolini and Corraini Edizioni, 2018); monographic essay on the work. |
| • | M. Apa, "Codice in exemplum Giulio Paolini", in Sentieri (A.C.G.T.) Festival di Arte Contemporanea di Amelia, exhibition catalogue, [Rome] 2019, not pag., not repr. |
| • | M. Apa, "Pensiero e azione del linguaggio (Giulio Paolini e Dan Flavin)", in L'azione, proceedings of the study day promoted by the Pontificio Ateneo Sant'Anselmo, Rome, 4 October 2016, edited by D. López-Tello García, P. Nouzille, O.M. Sarr (Sankt Ottilien: EOS Verlag, 2019), pp. 266-267, not repr. |
| • | C. Lonzi, Self-portrait (Brussels-London: Divided Publishing, 2021), repr. p. 44. |
| • | M. Apa, Registri di Arte. La necessità del Sacro. Un album di Immagini (Rome: Gangemi Editore, 2022), p. 352, repr. |
| • | P. Repetto, “Oltre il visibile”, in Giulio Paolini. O.D.E., exhibition catalogue, Monforte d’Alba (Cuneo), Castello di Perno (Alba: Fondazione Mancini Carini, 2022), p. 38, not repr. |
| • | E. Antenucci, “Staging Interruption: Quotation, Montage, and Feminist Thought in Carla Lonzi’s Autoritratto”, in The Italianist 43, no. 1 (London), quarterly online journal, 11 December 2023, pp. 92-93, repr. p. 92. |
