L'altra figura 1984

Curator: Let’s turn our attention now to Giulio Paolini's “L'altra figura” from 1984. It’s an installation featuring two marble busts on plinths, but something quite dramatic has clearly happened here. Editor: My first thought? Controlled chaos! These two classical busts are beautiful, sure, but the scattering of broken marble at their feet tells a more turbulent story. It feels like a beautiful accident, or perhaps a carefully staged demolition. Curator: It's fascinating, isn't it? Paolini often played with ideas of repetition and mirroring, but here that's contrasted with rupture. We see a deconstruction of the classical ideal, quite literally. The placement also alludes to institutional critique. Displaying fragmented objects challenges the role of the museum to protect art in aspic, highlighting its vulnerabilities. Editor: That makes total sense. There’s a very quiet kind of drama in the dialogue that is going on here between the pristine and ruined, the original and its copy. It reminds me of a performance still unfolding, a kind of ghost. Are the busts looking down, away from, or at the shards? Did someone do this? Or, if time did it, what happened, in that particular moment, to just these sculptures? What’s happened here? Curator: It’s all very carefully choreographed. And he used found objects a lot—questioning authenticity and originality. By presenting these recognizable forms then destroying them, Paolini asks the viewer to confront our assumptions about what art "should" be and whom it serves. It’s all political when you interrogate that kind of legacy and access to that tradition. Editor: And there’s this almost brutal simplicity in the aesthetic; white marble, sharp clean angles, nothing extraneous to distract from the drama playing out. It's beautiful precisely because of its violence. A kind of quiet aggression I would say! A deconstruction for sure. Very clever indeed! Curator: Absolutely, an installation that is a quiet contemplation on history. And indeed how we frame, and ultimately use history. A work I believe gets richer with every visit! Editor: Very much agreed! A piece to let settle within one's memory—almost as an excavation itself.