Autoritratto come marionetta, 1992
GPO-0692
Self-Portrait as a Puppet
Primed canvases, pencil and red pencil on wall, stretchers, men’s jacket, rolled up canvas
Dismantled work
The drawing outlined on the wall recalls a room in perspective, with several "paintings" lined up at the viewer's eye level (four drawn squares and a primed canvas). An overturned canvas hanging at the bottom of the wall, overlapping and staggered in relation to a drawn square, simulates a painting on the ground propped up against the back wall of a virtual room. At the point where the diagonals marked in red pencil intersect, a cut-out square simulates a "case" with respect to the plinth outlined in the foreground of the drawing. This cut-out also recalls a puppet theatre, animated by several elements hanging behind the cut-out empty square: two disassembled stretchers with their crossbars arranged so that they evoke vaguely anthropomorphic features, a men's jacket stuck between the two stretchers, and a canvas rolled in the manner of a scroll evoke a "self-portrait as a marionette".
| 1992 | Kassel, Documenta-Halle, Documenta IX, 30 June - 20 September, not repr. |
| • | “‘documenta als Motor’. Ein Rundgang durch die DOCUMENTA IX, kommentiert von Jan Hoet”, in Kunstforum International 119 (Ruppichteroth), 1992, p. 373, col. repr. p. 374. |
| • | M. Disch, Giulio Paolini. Catalogo ragionato 1960-1999, vol. 2 (Milan: Skira editore, 2008), cat. no. 692 p. 706, col. repr. |