Inside, in the Magazine's London Commentary section, Charles Harrison wrote about Universal Electronic Vacuum:
One
of the more dazzling exhibitors in ‘Transatlantic Graphics’, Eduardo Paolozzi
speaks of the screenprints in his new series as failures. (Universal Electronic Vacuum is on exhibition at the ALECTO
GALLERY). If we can free ourselves from
the spell cast by images with a visual appeal and impact as strong as these
have, we may come to agree with him. The
failure is in the process, which, in reproducing the mental excitements of an
age in which so much information and so many stimuli are there to be absorbed,
can yet find no precise equivalent, in visual terms, for the activities of
scanning and digestion. This is of
course only a failure in comparative terms.
No one has travelled further than Paolozzi in search of a solution to
this particular problem nor come closer to finding one. For us it is the evidence of restless search
that makes these prints so intensely exciting.
Paolozzi has constantly pushed at the frontiers of printmaking, acting
as an ideas-man in a technological context.
Collage elements from all sources – Woolworths table cloths to computer
circuits, five and dime store cutouts to fine art reproductions – are manipulated
into a series of total images, constructed like nests of Chinese boxes, in
which the artist is involved so far as they are critical assessments of a given
situation. These collages are ‘translated’
by the screenprinter and printed in a range of colours decided by a part-arbitrary,
part systematic process which guarantees tonal balance. The printmaker acts as a servo-mechanism for
the ideas of the artist. The employment of
computers as means of reproducing episodes in the process of scanning is an
obvious next step upon which Paolozzi is already determined.
Meanwhile
there is much to learn from the Universal
Electronic Vacuum. The content of
the prints is one man’s singular consciousness in an age of multi-media,
expressed through the language of that age.
The artist feeds us with stimuli which we, so far as we respond to them,
can use to establish an image of his idea.
These gorgeous colours and dazzling shapes are not solely for our delectation. An understanding of the things he does – of his
behaviour in a visual sense – gives us insight into the experience of the artist
and enables us to share his idea. The
printed sheets of the Universal
Electronic Vacuum are not records of visual insights but ideas expressed in
visible form. The sets are printed in
such a way that no two runs of the same print produce the same arrangement of
colours. It is less important that the
colours are arranged as they are than that each print is different within the
same edition. What matters is the idea
of infinite difference, with its far-reaching implications for the structure of
our thinking about the art object. The
actual colours printed are no more than the record – the visual evidence – of this
idea. If the artist could convey his
ideas without needing to create objects which embody them, he would be no less
an artist. In human terms the artist is
the man whose ideas are most energetic.
He is no less than that and no more.
There
is a real possibility that the rapidly developing involvement with the
screenprint, often to the neglect of other, more fine art media, will have the
effect of forcing us to look more closely at the real content of art. It is a paradox that the artist may well be
able to reveal more of himself by leaving the execution of his ideas to the
technician. If the object itself,
seductive as it often is, can be so accurately specified and so easily
duplicated, perhaps we shall come at last to value its physical substance less
that the idea for which it is no more than a clothing.
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