In December
1969 and January 1970 Pistoletto wrote The Minus Man, the Unbearable
Side, a reflection on the activity conducted by The Zoo. The
essay was written in exactly one month’s time, in one, final
draft, on the 365 pages of a diary. The book took its name from The
Minus Man, a game that was staged by The Zoo in Corniglia, in
the summer of 1969, and that reappeared in The Minus Man’s
Office, an installation first presented in Bologna in 1970. The
Minus Man is for Pistoletto the symbol of the sole being, of
the uniqueness in the great play of the double, and of the void understood
as the container of all things.
Published in 1970 in Salerno by Marcello Rumma, the book is available
today in the anthology of Pistoletto’s writings from 1962 to
1988, also translated into English, Un artista in meno/A Minus
Artist (Hopefulmonster, Florence, 1989). The French edition (L’homme
noir, Le coté insupportable, École Nationale Supérieure
des Beaux-Arts, Paris) was published in 1988 and the German version
(Der schwarze Mann. Die unerträgliche Seite, Pakesch
& Schlebrügge, Vienna), in 1997. |
