Charcoal drawing on paper made up of a series of concentric circles representing a disc-world, a symbol of the Universe and History etched onto it. The title, Dramophone, identifies a group of works that included a performance (inv. 1136) and a series of drawings representing the disc or that cite Francis James Barraud’s painting, which became the logo a famous record label, ‘La voce del padrone’ (His Master’s Voice). Incorporated into Mauri’s works since 1959 as an emblem of mass media culture along with comics and cinema, here the musical disc takes on a historical and ideological connotation: ‘Great design of the disc as a metaphor for a “world already recorded”. That “His Master’s Voice”, as a brand and structure of the land. As in a Dürer drawing: it’s Europe. The epicentre of which, it has been said, is German culture. The design of the world simulates a figure of the universe. The universe/a disc already recorded: history as already imprinted, in circles, around this enormous emblem. From which we imagine the dog and master, descended to earth, to confront one another as veritable emblems of the present.’1

1. F. Mauri, ‘Dramophone’, in Imprinting: sperimentazione e linguaggio, edited by C.M. Benveduti, T. Catalano, F. Falasca, Rome, 1976, p. 157.