.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
Duality lies at the heart of Michelangelo Pistoletto's work. Since the early 1960s when the first of his Mirror Paintings evolved from his painted self-portraits, Pistoletto, like many of the Arte Povera generation with which he is associated, not least among them Giulio Paolini and Alighiero Boetti, has made specific and focused use of double-sided elements, of tautology and mimesis as a way of puncturing the viewer's conventional understanding of reality and of further exploring the world.
It is, Pistoletto admits, his Mirror Paintings, first created in the 1960s and continuing today, that run, 'like a golden thread' throughout his oeuvre. But the complex duality that they were the first of his works to articulate is a theme that underlies almost all his many other varied creations and activities. Of his Minus Objects, for example - that assortment of strange unrelated human-scale objects all seemingly defined by but demonstrably lacking the participation of a viewer - he said, 'I feel that in (these works) I have entered into the mirror and actively penetrated that dimension of time which was represented in my mirror paintings... (They)... bear witness to the need to live and act in accordance with this dimension, i.e. in the light of the unrepeatable quality of each instant of time, each place, and thus of each of the present action.' (Michelangelo Pistoletto, 'Minus Objects', 1966 quoted in Michelangelo Pistoletto from One to Many 1956-1974, exh. cat., Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2010, p. viii).
Forming an ever-expansive path that weaves between object and representation, and between the world of artifice and the real world of daily experience, Pistoletto's art acts as a kind of mediator between these worlds. By seemingly translating the world into a stage and all of life into some kind of performance, it also purports to offer, through such overt mimesis, a wider understanding of the role of art and the potential for its extension into the socio-political arena. For a while in the early 1970s, Pistoletto explored this potential of his work to the full, actually living and working within a travelling group of performers known as 'Lo Zoo'. His work during these years laid the foundations of much of the increasingly open and expansive work that has dominated his art since the 1980s and which culminated in the establishment of the vast Cittadellarte project and its collective aim of 'inspiring and producing a responsible change in society by means of creative ideas and projects.' (M. Pistoletto, Cittadellarte Fondazione Pistoletto website. https://www.cittadellarte.it (accessed on 15 December 2011))
From his Mirror Paintings and his Minus Objects to his rags and his actions, from his sculptures and rooms to his installations and projects, the dominant feature of Pistoletto's extraordinary rich and multifarious art is one in which the viewer is always made to feel actively aware of their presence and complicity in the successful operation of the work. From their reflected image in the mirror to the witnessing of the plaster dog staring at himself in Cane allo Specchio for example, or being enveloped by an empty surface as in Bianco carta, the viewer of Pistoletto's work becomes like an actor on a stage. It is the significance and meaning that the viewer's gaze or physical presence within the work brings to Pistoletto's art, and it is this which in the end not only completes and defines it, but also opens it up to the world.
It is, Pistoletto admits, his Mirror Paintings, first created in the 1960s and continuing today, that run, 'like a golden thread' throughout his oeuvre. But the complex duality that they were the first of his works to articulate is a theme that underlies almost all his many other varied creations and activities. Of his Minus Objects, for example - that assortment of strange unrelated human-scale objects all seemingly defined by but demonstrably lacking the participation of a viewer - he said, 'I feel that in (these works) I have entered into the mirror and actively penetrated that dimension of time which was represented in my mirror paintings... (They)... bear witness to the need to live and act in accordance with this dimension, i.e. in the light of the unrepeatable quality of each instant of time, each place, and thus of each of the present action.' (Michelangelo Pistoletto, 'Minus Objects', 1966 quoted in Michelangelo Pistoletto from One to Many 1956-1974, exh. cat., Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2010, p. viii).
Forming an ever-expansive path that weaves between object and representation, and between the world of artifice and the real world of daily experience, Pistoletto's art acts as a kind of mediator between these worlds. By seemingly translating the world into a stage and all of life into some kind of performance, it also purports to offer, through such overt mimesis, a wider understanding of the role of art and the potential for its extension into the socio-political arena. For a while in the early 1970s, Pistoletto explored this potential of his work to the full, actually living and working within a travelling group of performers known as 'Lo Zoo'. His work during these years laid the foundations of much of the increasingly open and expansive work that has dominated his art since the 1980s and which culminated in the establishment of the vast Cittadellarte project and its collective aim of 'inspiring and producing a responsible change in society by means of creative ideas and projects.' (M. Pistoletto, Cittadellarte Fondazione Pistoletto website. https://www.cittadellarte.it (accessed on 15 December 2011))
From his Mirror Paintings and his Minus Objects to his rags and his actions, from his sculptures and rooms to his installations and projects, the dominant feature of Pistoletto's extraordinary rich and multifarious art is one in which the viewer is always made to feel actively aware of their presence and complicity in the successful operation of the work. From their reflected image in the mirror to the witnessing of the plaster dog staring at himself in Cane allo Specchio for example, or being enveloped by an empty surface as in Bianco carta, the viewer of Pistoletto's work becomes like an actor on a stage. It is the significance and meaning that the viewer's gaze or physical presence within the work brings to Pistoletto's art, and it is this which in the end not only completes and defines it, but also opens it up to the world.