Mario Schifano

" The idea of reinterpreting an image is a prominent feature of Mario Schifano’s art. However, here the analysis does not concern a painting – as one could have expected – but a photograph, one of the most well-known photographs of the Futurist group. Therefore, it is not the work of art under inspection, but the image of the artists themselves. In the same way as television does not show the real events but the post/pre-events or the medium itself interposed between ourselves and the events themselves, the artist’s evidence cannot concern anything but re-visiting, re-examining, re-studying facts, events, faces, people already consumed, worn out, well-known, placed in history …

''… Therefore, the photograph is printed without any background, the figures are suspended … the images are present in memory and as such they do not need any historical frame, they are almost oneiric apparitions … Very often – as we know – Schifano revisits, retrieves and reworks the same works, just as memory treats old subjects, lived moments, memories." (Pierluigi Tazzi & Giorgio Verzotti, Schifano ‘60/’70, Milan 1990, pp.75 & 76)