Eduardo Paolozzi J W575 Paolozzi Book 11 03/10/2011 17:27 Page 2 J W575 Paolozzi Book 11 03/10/2011 17:27 Page 3
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J W575 Paolozzi book_11 03/10/2011 17:27 Page 1 Eduardo Paolozzi J W575 Paolozzi book_11 03/10/2011 17:27 Page 2 J W575 Paolozzi book_11 03/10/2011 17:27 Page 3 Eduardo Paolozzi Archaeology of a Used Future : Sculpture 1946 –1959 Texts by Peter Selz & John-Paul Stonard Photography by David Farrell Jonathan Clark Fine Art in association with The Paolozzi Foundation J W575 Paolozzi book_11 03/10/2011 17:27 Page 4 J W575 Paolozzi book_11 03/10/2011 17:27 Page 5 Foreword Simon Hucker fig.1 Krokodeel 1956, bronze, h.36 in / 92 cm Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh 5 J W575 Paolozzi book_11 03/10/2011 17:27 Page 6 J W575 Paolozzi book_11 03/10/2011 17:27 Page 7 Eduardo Paolozzi: A Personal Recollection Peter Selz I first encountered Paolozzi’s work when I saw his Dubuffet’s paintings and sculptures as well as his St. Sebastian No2 at the Guggenheim Museum in art brut collection. The French artist’s use of old 1958. Here was this solitary figure, made of a and discarded materials, the coarse surfaces of his conglomeration of machine parts and all kinds of pictures, his grotesques, were perhaps most detritus, which the sculptor metamorphosed into a important. In his Statement in the catalogue of New tattered figure with a large encrusted head, a Images, Dubuffet quoted Joseph Conrad speaking ramshackle torso and thin legs. It appeared like a of “a mixture of familiarity and terror” which relic from the distant past and a robot of a perilous certainly applies to Paolozzi’s bronzes. Although future. Then I saw a show of small bronzes by this entitled with heroic names such as Sebastian, Jason, sculptor at Betty Parsons, the prime gallery of the Icarus, Japanese War God, Cyclops, they are clearly new American painting. I was selecting work for my 20th century existential anti-heroes, expressing the forthcoming exhibition New Images of Man at the human predicament. In the introduction to the Museum of Modern Art at that time and decided catalogue of New Images, I spoke of an art produced that this Italian-Scottish artist had to be in the by painters and sculptors working in the aftermath show. The core artists of that international of Auschwitz and Hiroshima, being acutely aware of exhibition of the New Figuration were Giacometti, what Nietzsche called “the eternal wounds of Dubuffet, de Kooning, Pollock (the late black-white existence.” figurative paintings), Bacon, and among younger artists Leon Golub, Richard Diebenkorn, Karel The exhibition at MoMA , the high altar of Appel, César, Nathan Oliveira and H.C. modernism, caused mixed reactions. To see it, was Westermann. basically a tragic experience. Furthermore, it was an international show at a time when the Museum’s It was during a 3 year stay in Paris in the late 1940s International Council, with unrevealed support that Paolozzi met Braque and Balthus, came in from federal agencies, supported the exhibitions of contact with the Surrealists, saw Mary Reynolds’ the Abstract Expressionists as signifiers of collection of leftover relics by Duchamp, admired American freedom: The Triumph of American the “presence” of Giacometti’s tall figures and Painting as the American art critic Irving Sandler 7 J W575 Paolozzi book_11 03/10/2011 17:27 Page 8 would arrogantly entitle his 1976 book on the department at the university, he would address me movement. A few years after the show, in 1964, in his commanding voice, telling me that industrial when Robert Rauschenberg was given the first processes and techniques must be brought in, prize at the Venice Biennale, the French critic instead of old-fashioned academic teaching. When Pierre Restany, usually supportive of American art, I responded that the Bauhaus had gone in that protested at “ the aura of cultural imperialism direction, he replied that it was about time for this around the Americans”.¹ In this xenophobic to happen here. atmosphere major European sculptors like Paolozzi or Eduardo Chillida did not receive the attention In his own work at the time, Paolozzi was occupied they deserved. As the art historian Dennis Raverty with making screenprints largely based on the life later observed, “It could be argued that an and writings of Ludwig Wittgenstein. We also exhibition that placed Europeans on an equal talked about the metal sculptures which he had footing (with the Americans) was sure to arouse produced previous to his time here: they were hostility at that time, as would a show that gave given these highly polished mirror surfaces to such an important place to sculpture”.² Today New reflect their surroundings. Unlike the work of his Images of Man has assumed a notable place in the contemporaries, David Smith and Anthony Caro, history of 20th Century art: on a visit to the Tate in Paolozzi’s sculptures are not mere objects of pure 2005 I noticed that one gallery, showing several of form, but engage with the world in which we exist. the artists of the 1958 exhibition, was called “New Images of Man”, with excerpts from my catalogue During his time in California, he went to introduction as a wall label. Disneyland, the wax museums in San Francisco and Los Angeles, to Frederick’s lingerie show In 1964, fascinated by the changes that had rooms and Paramount Studios in Hollywood. He occurred in the artist’s work, I curated a small show also spent time at the University’s Computer of four new sculptures and As Is When screenprints Center, Stanford University’s Linear Accelerator at MoMA. Paolozzi now focused on modern Center, Douglas Aircraft Company in Santa technology and worked with technicians to execute Monica and the General Motors Assembly Plant in his ideas. He used geometric elements, had them Hayward. Paolozzi always saw art, especially his cast in corrosive aluminum, used in the aircraft own, in its cultural context: earlier he focused on industry and produced industrial collages. One of products of mass communication such as the pieces from this show, Lotus (1964) was acquired newspapers or publicity brochures, now he used by the Museum. It is a sculpture in which a relief of industrial techniques for his chromed steel and concentric circles on a square slab is mounted on polished aluminum in his search for what he tubular legs and can be seen as an industrial called “the sublime in everyday life”. version of his St.Sebastian of the previous decade. Notes 1) Pierre Restany, “La XXXII Biennale di Venezia”, quoted in In 1968, when I had left MoMA to become the Serge Guilbaut (ed), Reconstructing Modernism ( Canbridge, The founding director of the Berkeley Art Museum, I MIT Press, 1990) p.400. was able to have Paolozzi invited for a lectureship 2) Dennis Raverty, “Critical Perspectives on New Images of Man, Art Journal, Winter 1994,p.65 at the University of California. Eduardo was my house guest during his semester at Berkeley. Thinking that I was in charge of the practice of art fig.2 St. Sebastian I 1957, bronze, h.68 in / 173 cm Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art 8 J W575 Paolozzi book_11 03/10/2011 17:27 Page 9 J W575 Paolozzi book_11 03/10/2011 17:27 Page 10 J W575 Paolozzi book_11 03/10/2011 17:27 Page 11 Introduction to ‘New Images of Man’ Exhibition Catalogue, MoMA, 1959 Peter Selz Marsyas had no business playing the flute. Athena, Again in this generation a number of painters and who invented it, had tossed it aside because it sculptors, courageously aware of a time of dread, distorted the features of the player. But when have found articulate expression for the “eternal Marsyas, the satyr of Phrygia, found it, he wounds of existence.” This voice may “ dance and discovered that he could play on it the most yell like a madman” (Jean Dubuffet), like the wondrous strains. He challenged beautiful Apollo, drunken, flute-playing maenads of Phrygia. who then calmly played the strings of his lyre and won the contest. Apollo’s victory was almost The revelations and complexities of mid-twentieth- complete, and his divine proportions, conforming century life have called forth a profound feeling of to the measures of mathematics, were exalted in solitude and anxiety. The imagery of man which fifth-century Athens and have set the standard for has evolved from this reveals sometimes a new the tradition of Western art. But always there was dignity, sometimes despair, but always the the undercurrent of Marsyas’ beauty struggling uniqueness of man as he confronts his fate. Like past the twisted grimaces of a satyr. These strains Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Camus, these artists are have their measure not in the rational world of ware of anguish and dread, of life in which man – geometry but in the depth of man’s emotion. precarious and vulnerable – confronts the Instead of a canon of ideal proportion we are precipice, is aware of dying as well as living. confronted by what Nietzsche called “the eternal Their response is often deeply human without wounds of existence.” Among the artists who come making use of recognizable human imagery. It is to mind are the sculptors of the Age of found, for instance, in Mark Rothko’s expansive Constantine, of Moissac and Souillac, the painters ominous surfaces of silent contemplations, or in of the Book of Durrow, the Beatus Manuscripts, Jackson Pollock’s wildly intensive act of vociferous and the Campo Santo; Hieronymus Bosch, affirmation with its total commitment by the artist. Gruenewald, Goya, Picasso and Beckmann. In the case of the painters and sculptors discussed fig.3 Japanese War God 1958, bronze, h.60 in /152 cm Albright -Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo 11 J W575 Paolozzi book_11 03/10/2011 17:27 Page 12 here, however, a new human imagery unique to our effigies takes the place of politics and moral century has been evolved.