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Lot Essay
Hanging from the pseudo-ceiling, a bare lightbulb. This solitary element, reminiscent of the paintings of Francis Bacon that were so admired by Pistoletto and which had helped in the evolution of his celebrated Mirror Paintings, is the sole adornment on the polished surface, and becomes a feature in the inverted world in which the viewer and his or her surroundings are reflected. There is an impressive concision in the presentation of this solitary and discreet object, which is unobtrusive in comparison to the furniture and figures that fill other Mirror Paintings.
The bulb recalls sparse artists' studios, and it was indeed for this reason that it featured in Bacon's paintings; this may also be one of the reasons that Robert Rauschenberg owned a similar Mirror Painting by Pistoletto. And as well as this, there is a sinister quality, as the bulb recalls not only studios, but also gambling dens, torture chambers, even cells. This implies that our reflected doppelganger in the surface of La lampadina may be worse off than we ourselves are. Or is this a revelation?
Pistoletto's Mirror Paintings bring the fourth dimension to life. With this device, a Gordian Knot solution to the limitations that he felt when using oil on canvas, and manages to involve the surface in a constant reconfiguration, to involve the viewer in the surface, and crucially, to involve time as a part of the medium. 'I believe that the term 'time' is fundamental to the understanding of my work,' Pistoletto has declared.
'There is a difference between my work and 'art' in its traditional sense: my goal is not just two dimensions, not just three, but four dimensions. If my work is not read in terms of its four-dimensionality, that is, including the fourth dimension, time, then it will be misinterpreted, people will have great trouble understanding it. I feel that we have to start considering this dimension of time on the basis of fundamental works such as my mirror pictures. In traditional painting, representation and drawing cover the entire surface. This is a static aspect which has come down through the years as a univocal signal. It can correspond to the figure that I place on the surfaces of the mirror paintings, a fixed signal, an image 'snapped' at a certain historical moment. But in my mirror paintings the image coexists with every present moment. Old paintings exist today without containing the presence of our time; their only presence is that of their own time. It is our job to make them live, make them feel at home, enjoy them, criticise them, locate them historically, according to our present-day interest' (Pistoletto, quoted in G. Celant, Michelangelo Pistoletto, New York, 1989, p. 31).
The bulb recalls sparse artists' studios, and it was indeed for this reason that it featured in Bacon's paintings; this may also be one of the reasons that Robert Rauschenberg owned a similar Mirror Painting by Pistoletto. And as well as this, there is a sinister quality, as the bulb recalls not only studios, but also gambling dens, torture chambers, even cells. This implies that our reflected doppelganger in the surface of La lampadina may be worse off than we ourselves are. Or is this a revelation?
Pistoletto's Mirror Paintings bring the fourth dimension to life. With this device, a Gordian Knot solution to the limitations that he felt when using oil on canvas, and manages to involve the surface in a constant reconfiguration, to involve the viewer in the surface, and crucially, to involve time as a part of the medium. 'I believe that the term 'time' is fundamental to the understanding of my work,' Pistoletto has declared.
'There is a difference between my work and 'art' in its traditional sense: my goal is not just two dimensions, not just three, but four dimensions. If my work is not read in terms of its four-dimensionality, that is, including the fourth dimension, time, then it will be misinterpreted, people will have great trouble understanding it. I feel that we have to start considering this dimension of time on the basis of fundamental works such as my mirror pictures. In traditional painting, representation and drawing cover the entire surface. This is a static aspect which has come down through the years as a univocal signal. It can correspond to the figure that I place on the surfaces of the mirror paintings, a fixed signal, an image 'snapped' at a certain historical moment. But in my mirror paintings the image coexists with every present moment. Old paintings exist today without containing the presence of our time; their only presence is that of their own time. It is our job to make them live, make them feel at home, enjoy them, criticise them, locate them historically, according to our present-day interest' (Pistoletto, quoted in G. Celant, Michelangelo Pistoletto, New York, 1989, p. 31).