Eduardo Paolozzi 1924-2005

PAOLOZZI

EDUARDO PAOLOZZI 1924-2005

The Paolozzi Foundation Jonathan Clark Fine Art FOREWORD

Once on a westbound train I found myself seated in the same carriage as Eduardo Paolozzi. Bulky and frenetic, as distinctive as one of his own sculptures and armed with a pair of scissors, the great man was installed at a table engrossed in chopping up a stack of magazines – sorting and piling up scores of images. He didn’t look up during the whole journey.

I was gripped – this scissoring, this mutilating of normal life to make art, was just as much a central part of his impulse as any ﬁnished result. Signs of the insatiable hunter gatherer abound in all Paolozzi’s work: material taken from popular culture, torn from its native context, then reapplied to be reborn as fresh ingredients – transformed into components of art. The quest for the grail was as much about hacking through the briars as it was about ﬁnding the chalice.

Paolozzi’s fracturing of images and ideas, his drive for constructive deconstruction, extends fully from the innovative Pop Art collages of the 1940s into the great sculptures he made throughout his career – particularly the portrait heads. With these, the fracturing doesn’t cease at the taking apart of an image; because it is portraiture, it applies also to the deconstruction of a personality, the dissecting of an identity. These sculptures exercise a kind of wilful psychoanalysis – an act of mental surgery.

In wrestling with his subjects in this way, Paolozzi also puts himself on the couch. The choice of those he portrays is telling. There is a clear engagement with science and philosophy – Newton, Faraday, Turing, Wittgenstein – as well as the mythic metamorphosis of Mr Hyde and Maria from Fritz Lang’s Metropolis – strands of European intellectualism a world away from Andy Warhol’s ‘Beautiful People’.

Not surprisingly there is a provocation behind the making of such portraiture – as with the Royal efﬁgies that were hacked from the front of Notre Dame during the French Revolution, Paolozzi’s treatment of his heads is also a kind of iconoclasm – a chopping away at formal representation that attacks cherished beliefs. Without doubt it is invasive and transforming, close to the edge; and without doubt it has resulted in objects of colossal presence.

1 MAKING FACES Daniel F. Herrmann Curator, Whitechapel Gallery, London

From the beginning, Eduardo Paolozzi broke With the end of the War, the Slade returned the rules. And from the beginning, he made to London, and Paolozzi with it. Still an ardent up his own. Rejecting any notion of academic visitor of museums and collections, his visual conformity or artistic convention, at the heart interests now expanded to the field of vernacular of Paolozzi’s practice lies a deep interest in and consumer culture, richly presented in difference, dissent and variation as the driving the magazines and periodicals that became forces of art. Nowhere does this become more available in midst the British post-war austerity. clear than in his life-long interest in the image of Abandoning the pencil for scissors and scalpel, the human head. Paolozzi started to convert his magazine sources into collages – a medium still widely unusual in Born in 1925 in Leith, just outside Edinburgh, the ‘fine arts’ at the time. The works The Return, as the oldest child of Italian-immigrant parents, 1952, and From Mass Merchandising Profit, Paolozzi left Scotland to study art. In Oxford, 1952 (p. 4), use covers of Time magazine as where the Slade School of Art was stationed their source material. Similar in approach, both during the Second World War, Paolozzi’s earliest constitute crucial early examples of an interest drawings were no exercises in perspective that would become a Recurring Theme1 in or anatomical composition, but copies of Paolozzi’s work. Rembrandt and Dürer from the Ashmolean Museum, and of African masks and objects The Return, 1952, presents the viewer with a from the Pitt-Rivers Museum. Capturing facial collaged backing, acting as a fine-art frame, expressions as well as compositional elements inside which the artist has glued the upper and and abstract forms, they rarely single out lower halves of two Time magazine title covers. individual personalities, but rather present a They have been heavily reworked. The three- whole plethora of faces and heads, anonymising quarters profile portraits of the sitters have been them in the process. Culled from different cut up into ten irregular segments, disjointedly sources and assembled in a whole array of arranged and with white gouache applied at its forms without imposed order other than a linear seams as if to emphasise their overlap. Crossing arrangement, the sketches do not serve as a the cut-out elements and tracing the outlines of the repertoire of characters for later use, as you sitters are heavy pencil lines, marking junctures like would expect. Instead, by presenting drawings a surgical pattern: Paolozzi’s entire composition of heads en masse, Paolozzi displayed a distinct accentuates its own fragmentary nature. interest in the human head as an archetypal image that finds its common denominator in its The second collage, From Mass Merchandising very differences of appearance. Profit, 1952, follows the same principle, using

3 three independent Time covers. Glued together the early 1980s onward. DuMont Head, 1984 the private commemoration or the public with both overlap and large gaps between the (p. 4), is a prominent example. Its title refers to celebration of individuals. Paolozzi’s heads, individual elements, with prominent lines of dark the Cologne publisher of art books who had both as collages and as sculptures, deliberately ink scarring its surface, the collage makes no only recently printed the first German-language subvert this category. Instead of investing his attempt at unity of form, but bares disjunction monograph on Paolozzi. The hefty bronze objects with immediate likeness and specific as its very hallmark. Paolozzi employs collage translates the cut-up iconography of the earlier individuality as would be expected, the artist as a means to display the process as well as the ‘Time Head’ collages into the third dimension. uses their heightened individual differences to product of his creation. While the sculpture is a solid cast, the artist create a universal type. Instead of limiting his still presents a composite face made up from aesthetic production to one particular, ideal He does so in a historically distinct way: in discrete individual parts – modular elements type, Paolozzi’s sculpture celebrates the variation contrast to the kaleidoscopic circus stage bought together in new combination. Some of of forms, including flaws, disproportion and of Victorian scrapbooks, the rambunctious these elements are direct references to earlier incongruence. And in this, they point us not narratives of the Dadaists, or even in contrast works by Paolozzi: the oblong, convex eyes towards fleeting individualities, but to more to Paolozzi’s own accumulations of consumer belong to Mr Cruikshank, a 1950s cast relating sweeping truths. goods in other works at the same time, the to an abstract humanoid dummy figure, used ‘Time Head Collages’ turn collage into a DuMont Head circa 1984 in radiation experiments. Others have a more D.H. modular operation. Instead of following bronze, edition 1/2, signed & numbered oblique heritage, ‘mixing, for instance, the facial May 2016 the outlines of the illustrated figures, or of h: 9¼ in / 23.5 cm features of Michelangelo’s “David” with those of introducing any idiosyncrasy of curved cuts, anonymous, stereotypical faces of mannequins. Daniel F. Herrmann is the Eisler Curator and Head of Curatorial Studies at the Whitechapel Gallery. Paolozzi only uses simple horizontal and vertical Paolozzi does not homogenise the juxtapositions He has published widely on Paolozzi, and was cuts, creating ‘a consistent and systematic in these newly developing physiognomies, but previously responsible for the Paolozzi Collection method that mimics the standardised production retains their visibility. He even aims at enhancing at the National Galleries of Scotland. of the covers themselves’, as Alex Kitnick has their synthetic character by adding lacerations, He will be curating an international touring pointed out.2 Paolozzi’s interest in the formal inserting technical elements or distorting facial retrospective of Eduardo Paolozzi’s works, opening composition of his source material is rooted proportions…’.4 DuMont Head is only one of a at the Whitechapel Gallery, London, from 15 February – 14 May 2017. in the magazine’s own creation of a type: long line of sculpted heads from the 1980s to ‘Despite depicting individuals, the subjects within the late 1990s. Made from plaster or bronze, [the Time magazine] covers appear more as small in size or monumental in scale, they systematic variations on a standard unit, mere form a body of work not unlike Paolozzi’s early placeholders of power. They look this way even renderings of anonymous Old Master drawings more after one sees what Paolozzi has done to and tribal masks. His interest in them is not so them.’3 By cutting up the Time cover portraits much as singular representations of individuality, into interchangeable blocks, Paolozzi empties but as part of a group, a concerted effort to the portraits of their individuality, leaving an approximate an archetype of sculpture – not End notes: archetypal form – a vessel for the viewers’ own as idealised, single form, but as a collective, 1. Cf. Robin Spencer, Eduardo Paolozzi. Recurring Themes, projections of meaning. each of the sculptures resembling the others London: Scottish Sculpture Trust, 1984. 2. Alex Kitnick, ‘Another Time’, Art Journal 71, no. 2 (2012), and yet with individual variations. Traditionally, From Mass Merchandising Profit 1952 pp. 32-43. It is this interest in archetypes that also lies at representations of the human head would 3. Ibid. collage 4. Winfried Konnertz, ‘Köpfe’, Eduardo Paolozzi: Köpfe, the heart of Paolozzi’s sculpted heads from 13¾ × 9 in / 35 × 23 cm have belonged to the genre of portraiture, Skulpturenmuseum Marl 1886, pp. 5-24.

4 5 Ludwig I (Wittgenstein) 1995 bronze, edition 2/3, signed, dated & numbered h: 17¾ in / 45 cm

7 (left to right) A, B, C, D, E, details on page 42. above: Oscar Wilde 1999 bronze, edition 1/3, signed & inscribed 6½ × 10 × 14¼ in / 16.5 × 25 × 37 cm

right: Vulcan (Study for Newcastle) 1998 bronze, artist’s cast, signed, dated & inscribed h: 24 in / 61 cm

10 11 above: DuMont Head 1984 bronze, edition 1/2, signed, dated & numbered h: 14¼ in / 37 cm right: Head 1993 bronze, edition 1/3, signed, dated & numbered h: 19¾ in / 50 cm

12 foldout: Wunderkammer circa 1990s cabinet of plaster casts, circa 1990s, foundation stamp 29½ × 39½ × 6 in / 75 × 100 × 15 cm left: Faraday 2000 plaster, foundation stamp 21¼ × 10¼ × 10 ¾ in / 54 × 26 × 27 cm

right: Faraday 2000 bronze, artist’s cast, signed, dated & inscribed 19½ × 20¼ × 10½ in / 49.5 × 51.5 × 26.5 cm

18 Head 1993 bronze, artist’s cast, signed, dated & inscribed h: 16½ in / 42 cm

20 Head circa 1993 Head circa 1994 plaster, foundation stamp plaster, foundation stamp h: 14 in / 35.5 cm h: 17 in / 43 cm

Gridded Head circa 1995 Alan Turing Maquette 2000 Untitled 2000 plaster, foundation stamp plaster, foundation stamp plaster, foundation stamp h: 15½ in / 39.5 cm h: 17½ in / 44.5 cm h: 19½ in / 49.5 cm

21 22 (left to right) F, G, H, I, J, details on page 42. Japanese Writer (Yukio Mishima) 1983 bronze, artist’s cast, signed h: 13 in / 33 cm

26 above: Plaque 1995 plaster, foundation stamp, signed, titled & dated verso 8¼ × 6 × ½ in / 21 × 5 × 1.5 cm

right: Newton – Maquette circa 1990 plaster, foundation stamp 19 × 24 × 13½ in / 48 × 61 × 34 cm London to Paris 2000 bronze, artist’s cast, signed, dated & inscribed, foundry stamp 11½ × 20 × 8¼ in / 29 × 50 × 21 cm

30 above: Early People Gallery, Museum of Scotland – Study circa 1998 plaster, foundation stamp, h: 15¾ in / 40 cm

right & inside foldout: Early People Gallery, Museum of Scotland – Maquettes circa 1998 plaster, foundation stamp, h: up to 12 in / 30.5 cm

Mr Hyde 1993 bronze, edition 2/2, signed, dated & numbered, foundry stamp, h: 17 in / 43 cm

35 above: Hermes II 1995 bronze, artist’s cast, signed, dated & inscribed, foundry stamp, h: 11¾ in / 30 cm

right: Vulcan (Study for Newcastle) 1998 plaster, foundation stamp, h: 14 in / 35.5 cm

36 37 (left to right) K, L, M, N, O, details on page 42. Head 1993

bronze, edition 1/3, signed, dated & numbered h: 16½ in / 42 cm

40 BRONZE & PLASTER GROUPS BIOGRAPHY

1924 Born 7 March, in Leith, Scotland 1944 St Martin’s School of Art, London pp.8 & 9 work details: (left to right) 1945-47 Studied sculpture at Slade School of Art, London 1947-49 Lived in Paris A I 1949-55 Taught at Central School of Art & Design Ludwig I (Wittgenstein) 1995 Head 1994 1952 Gave ‘Bunk’ lecture at the ICA plaster, foundation stamp bronze, artist’s cast Included in Venice Biennale h: 17½ in / 44.5 cm signed, dated & inscribed 1955-58 Lecturer, St Martin’s School, London h: 14¾ in / 37.5 cm 1956 Collaborated on This is Tomorrow at Whitechapel Gallery, London B 1968 Awarded CBE Josephine Baker 1996 J 1971 Retrospective exhibition, Tate Gallery plaster, foundation stamp Head 1993 Made ﬁlm ‘Mr Machine’ h: 12 in / 30.5 cm bronze, edition 1/3 1980 Tottenham Court Road station mosaics commissioned for London Underground signed, dated & numbered 1989 Knighted C h: 16½ in / 42 cm 1999 ‘Paolozzi Studio’ and ‘Eduardo Paolozzi Gallery’ open permanently in the Scottish National Galleries of Modern Art, Edinburgh Gridded Head circa 1995 2005 Died aged 81, 22 April, in London plaster, foundation stamp h: 19½ in / 49.5 cm pp.38 & 39 work details: (left to right)

SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS D K Metropolis Head (Maria) 1995 DuMont Head circa 1984 plaster, foundation stamp plaster, foundation stamp 1947 Drawings and Sculptures, Mayor Gallery, London h: 15¾ in / 40 cm h: 14¾ in / 37.5 cm 1949 Drawings and Bas-reliefs, Mayor Gallery, London 1958 Sculpture, Hanover Gallery, London 1960 Sculpture, Betty Parsons Gallery, New York E L 1963 New Works, Waddington Galleries, London Josephine Baker 1996 Head 1993 1964 Recent Sculpture and Collage, Robert Fraser Gallery, London plaster, foundation stamp plaster, foundation stamp Sculpture, Museum of Modern Art, New York h: 15½ / 39.5 cm h: 20 in / 51 cm 1965 As is When, Editions Alecto, London 1966 Recent Sculpture, Pace Gallery, New York M Sculpture, Prints, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh Alan Turing Maquette 2000 pp.23 & 24 work details: (left to right) 1967 Sculpture and Graphics, Hanover Gallery, London plaster, foundation stamp A Selection of Works from 1963-1966, Robert Fraser Gallery, London h: 15½ in / 39.5 cm F 1968 Serigraﬁeën, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam Mr Hyde 1993 1968-69 Plastik und Graphik, Städtische Kunsthalle, Düsseldorf bronze, edition 2/2 N 1969 Sculpture, Gouaches, Drawings, Prints, Konstmuseum, Göteberg, Sweden signed, dated & numbered, foundry stamp Head circa 1993 1971 Retrospective Exhibition, Tate Gallery, London h: 17 in / 43 cm plaster, foundation stamp 1972 The Conditional Probability Machine, University of St Andrews, Fife h: 14 in / 35.5 cm 1973 Bunk, Victoria & Albert Museum, London, and touring G 1974 Sculptures and Graphics, Kestnergesellschaft, Hanover Head 1993 O 1975 Retrospective Exhibition, Nationalgalerie, Berlin bronze, artist’s cast Head circa 1996 Sculpture, Drawings, Collages and Graphics, Arts Council of Great Britain, and touring signed, dated & inscribed plaster, foundation stamp 1976 New Reliefs and Sculpture, Marlborough Fine Art, London h: 16½ / 42 cm h: 15¼ in / 38.5 cm 1978 Kleinplastiken, Zeichnungen, Graﬁk, Kasseler Kunstverein, Kassel 1979 Collages, Prints, Sculptures, Talbot Rice Art Centre, Edinburgh H 1984 Private Vision - Public Art, Architectural Association, London Ludwig I (Wittgenstein) 1995 1984-85 Eduardo Paolozzi: Recurring Themes, Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh, and touring bronze, edition 2/3 1985 Lost Magic Kingdoms and Six Paper Moons from Nahuatl, Museum of Mankind, London 1986 Köpfe, Skulpturenmuseum Glaskasten, Marl signed, dated & numbered Eduardo Paolozzi Underground, Royal Academy of Arts, London h: 17¾ in / 45 cm 1987 Eduardo Paolozzi: Sculptures from a Garden, Serpentine Gallery, London 1988 Paolozzi Portraits, National Portrait Gallery, London

42 43 1990 Eduardo Paolozzi: Arche Noah, Stadtmuseum, Munich SELECTED MAJOR PUBLIC COLLECTIONS Eduardo Paolozzi: Mythologies, The Scottish Gallery, London 1994 Paolozzi at 70, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Wakefield UK 1996 Artificial Horizons and Eccentric Ladders, Talbot Rice Art Centre, Edinburgh, and touring Art Gallery & Museum, Aberdeen 2004 Bunk!, Flowers Central, London Arts Council, London Paolozzi at 80, Scottish National Galleries of Modern Art, Edinburgh British Council, London 2007 Physiognomy, Flowers Central, London British Museum, London 2011 Archaeology of a Used Future: Sculpture 1946–1959, Jonathan Clark Fine Art, London City Art Centre, Edinburgh 2013 Collaging Culture, Pallant House Gallery, Chichester City Art Gallery, Leeds Eduardo Paolozzi: Sculpting History, Cass Sculpture Foundation, Chichester City Art Gallery, Southampton 2014 Jeepers Creepers: Works of Eduardo Paolozzi from Dundee Collections, The McManus, Dundee Ferens Art Gallery, Hull Sir Eduardo Paolozzi: Man + Machine, University of Edinburgh Government Art Collection, London 2016 Graphic Works by Eduardo Paolozzi, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Wakefield Hunterian Museum, Glasgow Imperial War Museum, London SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh National Portrait Gallery, London Pallant House Gallery, Chichester 1952 26th Venice Biennale, Venice Pier Art Centre, Stromness 1953 Parallel of Life and Art, Institute of Contemporary Art, London Royal Academy of Arts, London 1956 This is Tomorrow, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh 1957 New Trends in British Art, New York Art Foundation, Rome Tate, London Ten Young British Sculptors, IV Bienal de São Paulo Victoria & Albert Museum, London 1959 documenta II, Kassel Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester New Images of Man, Museum of Modern Art, New York 1960 30th Venice Biennale; retrospective in British Pavilion, and touring OVERSEAS 1961-63 Recent British Sculpture, National Gallery of Canada, Ottowa, and touring 1962-63 British Art Today, San Francisco Museum of Art, and touring 1963 7th International Art Exhibition, British Section, Tokyo America Holland 1964 documenta III, Kassel Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam Neue Realisten und Pop Art, Akademie der Künste, Berlin Hirshhorn Collection, Washington 1967 Sculpture from Twenty Nations, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York Institute of Fine Arts, Minneapolis Italy 1968 Britische Kunst Heute, Kunstverein, Hamburg Museum of Art, Baltimore Galleria d’Arte Moderna, Rome documenta IV, Kassel Museum of Contemporary Art, Dallas Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice 1969 Pop Art Redefined, Hayward Gallery, London Museum of Modern Art, New York 1970 Expo ’70, Osaka Rockefeller Collection, New York Japan 1972 British Sculptors, Royal Academy of Arts, London Solomon R Guggenheim Museum, New York Kawasaki City Museum, Kawasaki 1976 Arte Inglese Oggi 1960-76, Palazzo Reale, Milan Walker Centre, Minneapolis 1977 Hayward Annual, Hayward Gallery, London Mexico 1979 The Development of an Idea, Glasgow League of Artists, Scotland, and touring Australia Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil, Mexico City 1980 Reliefs, Westfälischer Kunstverein, Münster, and touring Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney 1981 British Sculpture in the Twentieth Century, Whitechapel Art Gallery, London New Zealand Sculpture for the Blind, Tate Gallery, London Brazil Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, 1982 Innovations in Contemporary Printmaking, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford Museum of Contemporary Art, São Paulo Wellington 1983 English Painters 1900-82, Museo Municipal, Madrid Drawing in Air, Sunderland Art Centre, and touring Canada Venezuela 1984 Artistic Collaboration in the Twentieth Century, Hirshhorn Museum, Washington National Gallery of Canada, Ottowa Museo de Bellas Artes, Caracas The Automobile and Culture, Detroit Institute of Arts Contrariwise, Glynn Vivian Gallery, Swansea Germany 1986 Between Object and Image: Contemporary British Sculpture, Palacio de Velázquez, Madrid, and touring Lenbachhaus Museum, Munich 1987 British Art in the Twentieth Century, Royal Academy of Arts, London Nationalgalerie, Berlin 1996 Spellbound - Art and Film, Hayward Gallery, London A Century of English Sculpture, Galerie Nationale du Jeu de Paume, Paris Wallraf-Richartz Museum, Cologne 2002-03 Blast to Freeze: British Art in the 20th Century, Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Germany, and touring 2013-14 Pop Art Design, Barbican Centre, London

44 45 Wind Tunnel Test circa 1965 hand-ﬁnished photograph, signed lower right 11¼ × 11¾ in / 28.5 × 30 cm

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

With many thanks to The Paolozzi Foundation and Robin Spencer for their help in preparing this catalogue.

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