National Gallery Of Art | Audio

Michelangelo Pistoletto, artist, in conversation with James Meyer, curator of art, 1945–1974, National Gallery of Art. Commonly referred to as the Mirror Paintings and composed of photo-based images on steel, Michelangelo Pistoletto’s most celebrated works were developed in 1962 and represent his dual interest in conceptualism and figuration. The Mirror Paintings directly include the viewer and real time in the work, and open up perspective, reversing the trend of twentieth-century avant-garde movements that had closed the linear perspective of the Renaissance. In 1965–1966 Pistoletto created the Oggetti en meno (Minus Objects), a set of nonrepresentational sculptures constructed of commonplace, “poor” materials. These works are considered fundamental to the birth of the Arte Povera movement in Italy, of which Pistoletto was a leading figure. In the context of the disillusionment of postwar Europe, they sought to reconfigure the relationship between art and life. Comprised of 28 disparate objects—an oversize