La vestizione

The first part, composed of close-ups of faces shot at a sharp angle from below, takes place at the top of a ladder, where Pistoletto creates an ornate collar and a long cloak of cellophane that wraps Maria Pioppi. The action shifts then to the ground, where the images of several men stripped to the waist (including the artist Plinio Martelli) blend with those of two nude women dancing in the surface of a mirror work by Pistoletto himself, inspired by a famous photographic sequence of Eadweard Muybridge. The ‘performed’ humble industrial materials foreshadow several motifs developed by Pistoletto from 1968 with the company Lo Zoo, especially the action Cocapicco e Vestitorito presented at the Piper Pluriclub disco on 8 May 1968. —Tate Modern