Michelangelo Pistoletto

Michelangelo Pistoletto describes his newest work as coming to him like a mirage. And indeed, the half-submerged golden car, Miraggio (Mirage), 2016, serenely located in a fountain of Blenheim Palace, pops out like a surreal prop from a Fellini movie. For Pistoletto, this work sits at the juncture of the natural and man-made—much like Blenheim’s manicured gardens. But it also points to another clash: Arte Povera. Or rather, the collision of blue-chip status with an art that valued the humble and quotidian. One palpably feels this irony in the octogenarian artist’s unusual retrospective, distributed throughout Winston Churchill’s birthplace.

Starting with his mica paintings, 100 Mostre nel mese di Ottobre (100 Exhibitions in the Month of October), 1976—found antique paintings covered with the silicate mineral, situated among the Churchill family’s art collection—to his famous Venere degli stracci (Venus of the Rags), 1967–2013, a large statue of the titular goddess gazing into a mountain of tatters in the manor’s chapel, Pistoletto’s art stuns with its juxtapositions of antiquity and modern waste. But these pieces do fit quite beautifully with their lavish surroundings, suggesting that time—and success—have somewhat softened the artist’s original vision.

Miraggio’s watery reflection also connects to Pistoletto’s mirror paintings, a selection of which fills the palace’s vast library. Thirty-two pieces, collectively titled Self-Portraits (Il Presente/The Present) to Quadri specchianti/Mirror Paintings, 1961–2016, are installed back to back and face to face, creating a veritable hall of mirrors à la Versailles. Here, Pistoletto creates a melancholy sense of time unfolding, where his images meet and merge into one another, seeping forever into our present.