L’apparizione della Vergine, 1995
GPO-0761
The Appearance of the Virgin
Photo prints, plexiglas sheets, Wood’s lamp
Four photo prints and four plexiglas sheets 50 x 50 cm each
Collection of the artist
• 1995, Padua, Palazzo della Ragione: the photographic units are arranged on four of the sixty-four canvases of the work titled Essere o non essere (GPO-0757).
Four photographic units placed at short intervals recreating the image of Francis Picabia's La Sainte Vierge II (1920) are held down by four plexiglas sheets of the same size and arranged so that they are staggered, as if they had been dishevelled by the Wood's lamp that illuminates the ensemble. The title, in addition to alluding to Picabia, expresses the sublime instant of an immaculate apparition that the work calls into play. Between the spot of black ink, suggesting a potential drawing, and the Wood's lamp (or black light), which refers to the surfacing of an image from the liquid developer in photography, L’apparizione della Vergine holds back the suspension of the "miraculous" moment when an image appears before the gaze.
The same theme was also reformulated in a later version (GPO-0770).
Francis Picabia, La Sainte Vierge II, 1920, Indian ink on paper, Bibliothèque Doucet, Paris.
| 1995 | Padua, Salone del Palazzo della Ragione, Giulio Paolini, 18 June - 23 July, cited in the checklist of exhibited works p. 47, not repr., referred to in the texts by V. Baradel p. 16, L. Cherubini p. 75. |
| • | M. Disch, “L’atto espositivo. Appunti sul lavoro di Giulio Paolini”, in Giulio Paolini. Von heute bis gestern / Da oggi a ieri, exhibition catalogue, Graz, Neue Galerie im Landesmuseum Joanneum (Ostfildern-Ruit: Cantz Verlag, 1998), p. 139, not repr. |
| • | Giulio Paolini. Premio Internazionale Koinè 2000 alla carriera, exhibition catalogue, Verona, Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea Palazzo Forti (Milan: Electa, 2001), col. repr. p. 49 (exhibition view Padua 1995). |
| • | M. Disch, Giulio Paolini. Catalogo ragionato 1960-1999, vol. 2 (Milan: Skira editore, 2008), cat. no. 761 p. 773, col. repr. (exhibition view Padua 1995). |
| • | Arte povera 2011, edited by G. Celant (Milan: Mondadori Electa, 2011), col. repr. no. 324 (exhibition view Padua 1995, barely visible). |
| • | B. Satre, Giulio Paolini. Essere o non essere, 1994-95. In collezione 1 (Turin-Mantua: Fondazione Giulio e Anna Paolini and Corraini Edizioni, 2014), pp. 81-82, not repr. |
| • | Giulio Paolini. A come Accademia, exhibition catalogue, Rome, Accademia Nazionale di San Luca (Rome: Gangemi Editore, 2023), col. repr. pp. 220-221 (exhibition view Padova 1995). |
