In 1961,
after making a series of reflecting black-ground paintings significantly
entitled The Present, Pistoletto conducted a series of experiments
intended to achieve the highest degree of objectivity—the kind
of objectivity shown in the early mirror paintings. To make the background
more reflective he tried using aluminum sheets, which he applied to
the canvas (Grey Man from Behind, 1961). Finally he identified
mirror-finished steel as the best material. To give maximum objectivity
to the figure, too, he decided to use photography. Several trials
followed. He applied cutout photographic images or photographic gelatin
directly to polished steel—a solution he discarded because the
photograph continued to look like an inserted object that contrasted
with the immateriality of the reflected image. He also tried to use
a normal mirror—another solution rejected because of the problems
posed by the thickness of the glass. At last, in 1962, he perfected
the technique of his subsequent mirror paintings: a sheet of mirror-finished
stainless steel fitted with an image obtained by tracing a photograph,
enlarged to life size, with the tip of a brush, on tissue paper. After
1971 the painted tissue was replaced by a silkscreen of the photographic
image.
The mirror paintings are the foundation of Pistoletto’s oeuvre—both
of the artworks he makes and of his theoretical reflection in which
he constantly returns to them to study their meaning in depth and
to develop their implications. The essential characteristics the artist
identifies in them, are: the dimension of time (not just represented,
but presented in reality); the inclusion in the work of the viewer
and his/her surroundings (which make “the self-portrait of the
world”); the joining of couples of opposite polarity (static/dynamic,
surface/depth, absolute/relative, etc.), constituted and activated
by the interaction between the photographic image and what goes on
in the virtual space generated by the reflecting surface; the placement
of the mirror paintings no longer at window height, as paintings are
traditionally hung, but on the floor (which creates a passage through
which the space in which they are shown continues in the virtual space
of the work, a door that opens between art and life).
The mirror paintings were first exhibited in Pistoletto’s one-person
show at Galatea in April 1963. A few days after the opening Pistoletto
went to Paris, where he met the American dealer Ileana Sonnabend,
who later bought the entire show and took over Pistoletto’s
contract with Galatea.
“I realized there wasn’t any sort of
assent or interest around me: in fact there was a certain nervousness
and rejection, mainly by the gallery owner himself. So I took a
trip to Paris. There I met Beppe Romagnoni who told me about a gallery
where strange and interesting paintings were being shown. So I dropped
by the Sonnabend Gallery and asked to see these paintings. In this
way I first saw Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Rosenquist and Lichtenstein’s
paintings, and Segal and Chamberlain’s sculptures. They asked
me if I was a critic and I said, no, I’m an artist. When asked
what I did, I showed them the Galatea catalogue and a painting.
They were struck by the work and came to Turin where they bought
up the whole Galatea show. They took over the contract with Tazzoli
and a situation developed that was extremely important for me: from
my isolation in Turin, I was catapulted into an international dimension”
(Michelangelo Pistoletto, interview with Germano Celant, cit., 26-29).
The mirror paintings quickly brought Pistoletto
international acknowledgement and success, which in turn led to
numerous one-person shows in Europe and in the United States (Paris,
1964; Brussels and Minneapolis, 1966; New York, 1967 and 1969; Rotterdam,
1969).
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