EPPH - Every Painter Paints Himself

The Traditionalism of Contemporary Art

Giulio Paolini (b. 1940) is an Italian artist living in Turin. His sculpture, Three by Three, is currently being exhibited at the new MAXXI museum in Rome and it demonstrates, with startling clarity that good contemporary artists today are just as aware as their predecessors that “every painter paints himself.” It is part of their DNA. Three life-size plaster casts of a young man, each based on the same figure in an engraving by Chardin, sit facing each other in a mysterious triangle. The artist among them, with a drawing-board on his lap, sketches a seated version of himself without the pad while his “model” looks back at him. The third figure, identical to the model, is an observer looking at the two of them. Or rather, he faces the artist because the model, if seen by “the observer”, would only be in his peripheral vision. For those who know, its meaning is clear. All art, using Chardin’s as an example, is a reflection of the artist and the observer, to see it accurately, must look at the art through the artist’s own eyes. It is a simple message that links the piece (and, no doubt, the artist’s whole oeuvre) to the great art that has come before. Like all art it is not, at its deepest level, original.