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Lot Essay
The work can be installed either as a diptych, with the two panels including the stereos or alternatively with all four panels, including the plain stainless steel panels in the centre.
'Nothing escapes the mirror. The great space is in the mirror, time (whole time) is already in the mirror and space has the dimension of time. (Michelangelo Pistoletto, 'Inside, inside the mirror', in exh. cat., Michelangelo Pistoletto, MACBA, Barcelona, 2000, p. 30)
Stereo is a large four-panel work by Pistoletto that uses the mimesis and illusion of the mirror to explore and erode the supposed borders between the notion of work of art as object, installation and concept. Consisting solely of two printed photographic images of speakers laid on the mirrored surface of a sequence of polished stainless steel panels, Stereo was first conceived in 1962. It is a work of such stark minimalistic reduction and dry conceptualism that it seems to anticipate much of the art of the late 1960s. Indeed, in hindsight it would appear to belong more alongside Donald Judd's industrially-made steel cubes and the late '60s chic of the Beatles' White Album or the magical monolith of Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey than among the mimetic and tautological honesty of Piero Manzoni's blank Achromes from which, in fact, it took its cue.
Pistoletto's mirrors evolved out of a series of self-portrait studies that the artist painted in the late 1950s and early 1960s. It was 'when I realized that someone like Pollock, although he attempted to transfer life onto canvas through action, did not succeed in taking possession of the work, which continued to escape him, remaining autonomous, and that the presence of the human figure in the painting of Bacon did not succeed in rendering a pathological vision of reality' Pistoletto recalled, that 'I understood that the moment had arrived to make the laws of objective reality enter the painting' (Michelangleo Pistoletto quoted in exh. cat., Identité Italienne, Paris, 1981, p. 81). The solution to this problem, Pistoletto found, was to use the mimesis of the mirror as a way of letting the reality of the person, himself or the viewer, enter into the painting.
Many of Pistoletto's mirror paintings play on this notion of paradox set up by the mirror and the act of the artist observing and attempting to record visual reality while also being captured and reflected in the mirror. Consequently many of Pistoletto's first mirror paintings depict the artist himself or other figures caught in the act of drawing or in being models being observed and drawn, by others. A paradox is immediately set up in this way that invokes the reality of the artist, the viewer (whose image also becomes a part of the work by being reflected in it), and the mysterious and arguably illusional world of the mirror itself. Pistoletto argued however, that the supposedly illusional world of the mirror in fact offered a deeper and fuller reality than the one in which we inhabit, and Stereo takes this paradoxical notion of the creative interaction and participation within the picture between creator and creation a step further than his figure-based mirror paintings. Devoid of any illusional painted human figure, indeed devoid of almost all objects, Stereo, with its two rectangular speakers, creates a stage, an arena within which the viewer can seemingly perform or observe themselves or other viewers, 'performing being' within what Pistoletto increasingly believed was the mystical dimension of the mirrored world.
'The mirror' Pistoletto insists, 'is a symbol that is simultaneously an anti-symbol. It is simply the physical and intellectual extension of the human phenomenon: from the eye to the mind and the actions, a person is entirely a series of reflexes and reflections. Indeed, the possibilities of mirroring cannot be contained within a limited dimension, and a mirror potentially reflects every place and continues to reflect even when and where no human eye is present. Hence, the mirror, on the altar or not, but nevertheless within the precincts of art, becomes the meeting point between the human mirroring and reflective phenomenon and the universal reality that the mirror is itself capable of reflecting, that is to say, the mirror functions as a mediator between the visible and the non-visible, extending the eyesight beyond its apparently normal capabilities. Whether in a room or on an altar, a mirror expands the possibilities of the eye and the capacity of the mind so far as to offer a vision of totality' (Michelangelo Pistoletto , 'L'arte assume la religione', 1978 cited in G. Celant, Michelangelo Pistoletto, New York, 1989, p.28).
This sense of the multidimensionality offered by the mirror is reinforced in Stereo by the strange but implicit suggestion of music. Illusional, flat, one-dimensional and ultimately, silent speakers, they nevertheless convey the notion of the possibility of sound and therefore also presumably music, existing within the strange dimension of the mirrored world. In this way Pistoletto creates in this panoramic four-panel work not only a sense of the artifice of reality but also of the possibility for action and interaction between realities. His mirrors are not just a point of interchange between two dimensions of understanding but also an arena in which the artist, or anyone else, can operate, what he himself describes as a ' point of reference on which art rediscovers its own roots to become once again a reason for existence'.
'All terms in opposition, all antinomies, converge on the picture to form one single element, the concentration of a cosmos which reunites physical and mental, real and unreal, true and false, material and immaterial, immobility and movement, opacity and transparency, the absolute and the relative, maximum and minimum space and the entire space of time and each individual instant and so on...When I look in the mirror I see my image looking towards me and towards the space behind my shoulders, our directions are opposed and point towards each other; the distance between me...and my reflection is a space that can augment or decrease at will...in the act of turning the other way and walking away from the mirror I am aware of the fact that my image enters into the depth of the mirror, overcoming any perspective barrier. The penetration into life as a passionate expression of desire is contained in the mirror just as the penetration into the coldly gleaming realm of the mirror is contained in the rationality of the thought that supports the creative adventure of life' (Michelangelo Pistoletto cited in exh. cat., Arte Povera in collection, Castello di Rivoli, Turin, 2000, p. 260).
'Nothing escapes the mirror. The great space is in the mirror, time (whole time) is already in the mirror and space has the dimension of time. (Michelangelo Pistoletto, 'Inside, inside the mirror', in exh. cat., Michelangelo Pistoletto, MACBA, Barcelona, 2000, p. 30)
Stereo is a large four-panel work by Pistoletto that uses the mimesis and illusion of the mirror to explore and erode the supposed borders between the notion of work of art as object, installation and concept. Consisting solely of two printed photographic images of speakers laid on the mirrored surface of a sequence of polished stainless steel panels, Stereo was first conceived in 1962. It is a work of such stark minimalistic reduction and dry conceptualism that it seems to anticipate much of the art of the late 1960s. Indeed, in hindsight it would appear to belong more alongside Donald Judd's industrially-made steel cubes and the late '60s chic of the Beatles' White Album or the magical monolith of Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey than among the mimetic and tautological honesty of Piero Manzoni's blank Achromes from which, in fact, it took its cue.
Pistoletto's mirrors evolved out of a series of self-portrait studies that the artist painted in the late 1950s and early 1960s. It was 'when I realized that someone like Pollock, although he attempted to transfer life onto canvas through action, did not succeed in taking possession of the work, which continued to escape him, remaining autonomous, and that the presence of the human figure in the painting of Bacon did not succeed in rendering a pathological vision of reality' Pistoletto recalled, that 'I understood that the moment had arrived to make the laws of objective reality enter the painting' (Michelangleo Pistoletto quoted in exh. cat., Identité Italienne, Paris, 1981, p. 81). The solution to this problem, Pistoletto found, was to use the mimesis of the mirror as a way of letting the reality of the person, himself or the viewer, enter into the painting.
Many of Pistoletto's mirror paintings play on this notion of paradox set up by the mirror and the act of the artist observing and attempting to record visual reality while also being captured and reflected in the mirror. Consequently many of Pistoletto's first mirror paintings depict the artist himself or other figures caught in the act of drawing or in being models being observed and drawn, by others. A paradox is immediately set up in this way that invokes the reality of the artist, the viewer (whose image also becomes a part of the work by being reflected in it), and the mysterious and arguably illusional world of the mirror itself. Pistoletto argued however, that the supposedly illusional world of the mirror in fact offered a deeper and fuller reality than the one in which we inhabit, and Stereo takes this paradoxical notion of the creative interaction and participation within the picture between creator and creation a step further than his figure-based mirror paintings. Devoid of any illusional painted human figure, indeed devoid of almost all objects, Stereo, with its two rectangular speakers, creates a stage, an arena within which the viewer can seemingly perform or observe themselves or other viewers, 'performing being' within what Pistoletto increasingly believed was the mystical dimension of the mirrored world.
'The mirror' Pistoletto insists, 'is a symbol that is simultaneously an anti-symbol. It is simply the physical and intellectual extension of the human phenomenon: from the eye to the mind and the actions, a person is entirely a series of reflexes and reflections. Indeed, the possibilities of mirroring cannot be contained within a limited dimension, and a mirror potentially reflects every place and continues to reflect even when and where no human eye is present. Hence, the mirror, on the altar or not, but nevertheless within the precincts of art, becomes the meeting point between the human mirroring and reflective phenomenon and the universal reality that the mirror is itself capable of reflecting, that is to say, the mirror functions as a mediator between the visible and the non-visible, extending the eyesight beyond its apparently normal capabilities. Whether in a room or on an altar, a mirror expands the possibilities of the eye and the capacity of the mind so far as to offer a vision of totality' (Michelangelo Pistoletto , 'L'arte assume la religione', 1978 cited in G. Celant, Michelangelo Pistoletto, New York, 1989, p.28).
This sense of the multidimensionality offered by the mirror is reinforced in Stereo by the strange but implicit suggestion of music. Illusional, flat, one-dimensional and ultimately, silent speakers, they nevertheless convey the notion of the possibility of sound and therefore also presumably music, existing within the strange dimension of the mirrored world. In this way Pistoletto creates in this panoramic four-panel work not only a sense of the artifice of reality but also of the possibility for action and interaction between realities. His mirrors are not just a point of interchange between two dimensions of understanding but also an arena in which the artist, or anyone else, can operate, what he himself describes as a ' point of reference on which art rediscovers its own roots to become once again a reason for existence'.
'All terms in opposition, all antinomies, converge on the picture to form one single element, the concentration of a cosmos which reunites physical and mental, real and unreal, true and false, material and immaterial, immobility and movement, opacity and transparency, the absolute and the relative, maximum and minimum space and the entire space of time and each individual instant and so on...When I look in the mirror I see my image looking towards me and towards the space behind my shoulders, our directions are opposed and point towards each other; the distance between me...and my reflection is a space that can augment or decrease at will...in the act of turning the other way and walking away from the mirror I am aware of the fact that my image enters into the depth of the mirror, overcoming any perspective barrier. The penetration into life as a passionate expression of desire is contained in the mirror just as the penetration into the coldly gleaming realm of the mirror is contained in the rationality of the thought that supports the creative adventure of life' (Michelangelo Pistoletto cited in exh. cat., Arte Povera in collection, Castello di Rivoli, Turin, 2000, p. 260).