Fabulation

In Fabulation, a triptych whose panels can also be separated, Giulia Andreani gives a personal and enigmatic reinterpretation of history, drawing on photographs from the Condé Nast archives (a publishing group that owns, among others, Vogue, Vanity Fair, and The New Yorker—part of its archives belongs to the Pinault Collection), which she reconfigures in a monochrome palette of Payne’s gray, a technique that has become characteristic of her practice. For example, on the right panel, actress Lauren Bacall lies languidly on a wooden plank that is only partially visible, as in Ralph Crane’s 1945 photograph. Andreani’s depiction of her, however, is the result of a horizontal inversion, and the background has been replaced by a view of the Villa Foscari, also known as “La Malcontenta.” A Palladian residence built not far from Venice in the mid-16th century, the boat crossing its reflection in the water now bears another name: “Beware of the Painter.” These three panels thus provide a crucial example of the artist’s exploration, which “requires ‘pre-existing’ images in order to function, through painting, as a kind of re-vision of the world and of history.”