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Lot Essay
‘Man has always attempted to double himself as a means of attaining selfknowledge’, Pistoletto writes. In this vein, he seeks to double the viewers of this work so that they might better perceive their actions, physicality and identity in relation to the world at large’ (M. Pistoletto, Le ultime parole famose, Turin 1967).
The present work is a striking example of Michelangelo Pistoletto’s quadri specchianti or ‘mirror paintings’. A photographic image of an isolated man, poised with brush in hand, is silkscreened onto a plane of highly polished stainless steel. His back is turned to viewers, but when we stand in front of the artwork our reflections create the illusion that he is in fact facing us. We are invited to become active participants in an almost hallucinogenic experience that collapses reality and image, time and space.
Pistoletto’s pertinent subject – a painter, most likely the artist’s self-portrait – relates to the very inception of his mirror painting series. This extensive cycle of ‘open works’ evolved out of his figurative paintings of the late 1950s and early 1960s, which were largely influenced by Francis Bacon’s existential portraits. While drafting the head of a man onto a glossy ground, Pistoletto was fascinated to see his own body, the image, and the reflection of the room merge. From that moment on he became less interested in representing strong emotion and instead sought to transpose the drama of the real world onto a mirrored surface. The results are not entirely left to chance, however, as the spectator’s reflection is always held in tension with Pistoletto’s highly controlled aesthetic. These artworks persistently maintain an atmosphere of cool detachment that has often been compared to the films of his compatriot Michelangelo Antonioni.
The mirror paintings’ relation to the everyday, their accessibility, and their visual objectivity placed Pistoletto at the centre of the Pop art movement in the early 1960s. They secured his international reputation and launched him in the United States and Europe as a leading exponent of the Italian avant-garde. Yet unlike much of the mass media-conscious Pop work of his American counterparts, Pistoletto’s mirror paintings are to be understood in metaphysical terms. His theories adhere to those of French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan when he describes how man’s first intellectual experience and the path to rationality occurs with the recognition of one’s reflection. ‘Man has always attempted to double himself as a means of attaining selfknowledge’, Pistoletto writes. In this vein, he seeks to double the viewers of this work so that they might better perceive their actions, physicality and identity in relation to the world at large’ (M. Pistoletto, Le ultime parole famose, Turin 1967).
The present work is a striking example of Michelangelo Pistoletto’s quadri specchianti or ‘mirror paintings’. A photographic image of an isolated man, poised with brush in hand, is silkscreened onto a plane of highly polished stainless steel. His back is turned to viewers, but when we stand in front of the artwork our reflections create the illusion that he is in fact facing us. We are invited to become active participants in an almost hallucinogenic experience that collapses reality and image, time and space.
Pistoletto’s pertinent subject – a painter, most likely the artist’s self-portrait – relates to the very inception of his mirror painting series. This extensive cycle of ‘open works’ evolved out of his figurative paintings of the late 1950s and early 1960s, which were largely influenced by Francis Bacon’s existential portraits. While drafting the head of a man onto a glossy ground, Pistoletto was fascinated to see his own body, the image, and the reflection of the room merge. From that moment on he became less interested in representing strong emotion and instead sought to transpose the drama of the real world onto a mirrored surface. The results are not entirely left to chance, however, as the spectator’s reflection is always held in tension with Pistoletto’s highly controlled aesthetic. These artworks persistently maintain an atmosphere of cool detachment that has often been compared to the films of his compatriot Michelangelo Antonioni.
The mirror paintings’ relation to the everyday, their accessibility, and their visual objectivity placed Pistoletto at the centre of the Pop art movement in the early 1960s. They secured his international reputation and launched him in the United States and Europe as a leading exponent of the Italian avant-garde. Yet unlike much of the mass media-conscious Pop work of his American counterparts, Pistoletto’s mirror paintings are to be understood in metaphysical terms. His theories adhere to those of French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan when he describes how man’s first intellectual experience and the path to rationality occurs with the recognition of one’s reflection. ‘Man has always attempted to double himself as a means of attaining selfknowledge’, Pistoletto writes. In this vein, he seeks to double the viewers of this work so that they might better perceive their actions, physicality and identity in relation to the world at large’ (M. Pistoletto, Le ultime parole famose, Turin 1967).