Abstract

At the 1972 Venice Biennale, Franco Vaccari, one of the foremost artists of Conceptual Art, realised a formidably powerful, strikingly expressive event, titled Leave on the Walls a Photographic Trace of Your Fleeting Visit. Through an examination of the photo-book the artist drew from this perfect “exhibition in real timeµ, this essay aims to outline a few of the many possible paths that may be taken between psychoanalysis, philosophy, art criticism, and narratology. In this visual and narrative enterprise, set up by an exceptionally well read and cultured author, the issues of divided subjectivity, narcissism and melancholy, as well as the death of the author and of the father, dominate to the point of being ineluctable.