Aegina, Temple of Aphaia, photograph by Robert Weir Schultz and Sidney Barnsley, 1889.
- The Warburg Institute Photographic Archive.
The very word Kalón, which only improperly may be translated by the term 'beautiful', ought to put us on our guard: Beauty is all that pleases, arouses admiration, or draws the eye.The beautiful object is an object that by virtue of its form delights the senses, especially sight and hearing. But those aspects perceivable with the senses are not the only factors that express the Beauty of the object: in the case of the human body an important role is also played by the qualities of the soul and the personality, which are perceived by the mind's eye more than by the eye of the body.
- Umberto Eco, On Beauty, 2004.
ATLAS OF SURVIVAL, Giulia Parlato, 2018 - on-going.
Atlas of Survival is an ongoing project about Sicilian symbolism, in which I’m trying to unfold the process of hybridisation that Sicily and more specifically the area enclosing the city of Palermo, my hometown, experienced. Questioning the rigidity of historiography, I am interested in what has been left out by the latter, and how Sicilian symbolism can be re-thought. Referring back to the byzantine mosaics, I'm attempting to construct a new mosaic of Sicily, with a constellation of images floating in immense golden backgrounds.
- Giulia Parlato
Thessaloniki, Church of St Catherine, fragments of pulpit; photographs by Robert Weir Schultz and Sidney Barnsley, 1889.
- The Warburg Institute Photographic Archive.
Larry Sultan and Mike Mandel, Evidence, self-published, 1977.
Installation view of the exhibition, "Projects 12: Joan Fontcuberta/Pere Formiguera: Fauna"June 18, 1988–August 9, 1988. Photographic Archive.
The Museum of Modern Art Archives, New York. Photograph by Katherine Keller.
Diachronicles, Solo Show at Galleria Cavour, Photo Open Up, 2020, Padova, Italy.
Diachronicles, Travers Smith CSR Art Programme 2019/20, London.
Diachronicles, RCA Show, Royal College of Art, London, 2019
Diachronicles, Solo Show at Palazzo Rasponi 2, 2020, Ravenna, Italy.
Stills from Raiders of the Lost Ark, Steven Spielberg, 1981.
COLLATERAL HISTORIES
With the juxtaposition of photographs, 3D printed objects, collages and photomontages we explored the migration of material culture, and that transitional period when the transformation of the animal into the object occurs.We contemplated the process of evolution, both natural and cultural: from the material and constitutive animal bone, to the immaterial and symbolic human concept.The result is a series of odd artefacts, where the man-made and the organic are assembled into new, uncanny objects.
- Collaboration between Giulia Parlato and Giovanna Petrocchi for Art Licks, 2020.
The American of to-day no longer worships the rattle-snake. Extermination (and whisky) is his answer to it. Electricity enslaved, the lightning held captive in the wire, has produced a civilization which has no use for heathen poetry. But what does it put in its place? The forces of nature are no longer seen in anthropomorphic shapes; they are conceived as an endless succession of waves, obedient to the touch of a man's hand. With these waves the civilization of the mechanical age is destroying what natural science, itself emerging out of myth, had won with such vast effort the sanctuary of devotion, the remoteness needed for contemplation.
The modern Prometheus and the modern Icarus, Franklin and the Wright Brothers who invented the aeroplane, are those fateful destroyers of our sense of distance who threaten to lead the world back into chaos. Telegraph and telephone are destroying the cosmos. But myths and symbols, in attempting to establish spiritual bonds between man and the outside world, create space for devotion and scope for reason which are destroyed by the instantaneous electrical contact unless a disciplined humanity re-introduce the impediment of conscience.
- A Lecture on Serpent Ritual, Aby Warburg, Journal of the Warburg Institute, Vol. 2, No. 4, Apr. 1939, translated by W. F. Mainland.
Adam Broomberg & Oliver Chanarin, Holy Bible, MACK, 2013.
Panels from Mnemosyne Atlas by Aby Warburg, 1929
“Even [...] images suffer from reminiscences: the gesture, hardly sketched - and only slightly intensified or moved, therefore disturbing - brings an unconscious memory back ‘from the depths of time’. The visual admiration, in Warburg, always arouses something similar to a fundamental restlessness about the vortices of time”.
- Georges Didi-Huberman, The Surviving Image: Phantoms of Time and Time of Phantoms: Aby Warburg’s History of Art. 2002.
Artist - Cousin, Jean, the younger (Jean Cousin le fils) (c1522-c1594) or Goujon, Jean (born c1510, died after 1572). Hypnerotomachie, ou Discours du songe de Poliphile, Paris, 1546, fol. 12v.
- The Warburg Institute Photographic Archive.
Vase artefacts, Giulia Parlato, 2020.
A reconstruction from the pediment of the earlier temple of Athene Polias, Athens, 4th quarter 6th century BC, (photographer unknown).
- The Warburg Institute Photographic Archive.
Artist - Paduan, 1615. Della Fisonomia dell'huomo, Padua (Tozzi), 1623, fol. 113r.
- The Warburg Institute Photographic Archive.
The familiar will always remain the likely starting point for the rendering of the unfamiliar; an existing representation will always exert its spell over the artist even while he strives to record the truth.
- E.H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation.
Work in progress Collaboration between Giulia Parlato and 3D artist Giuseppe Alaimo, 2020.
Minutes to Midnight, Trent Parke, Steidl Verlag, 2005.
Images from a photographic conversation between Giulia Parlato and Matthew Rhys Thompson for stayathome.photography, 2020.
- all images by Giulia Parlato.
Paris Photo 2019, Artist talk, Giulia Parlato.
View from the top of the Parthenon, photograph by Robert Weir Schultz and Sidney Barnsley, 1889.
The Warburg Institute Photographic Archive
