At this time, Paolozzi was working on the leading edge of
the relatively-new-to Fine Art medium of silkscreen printing. This was
facilitated by the expertise of Chris Prater and his Kelpra Studio. Chris’s greatest
contribution probably lay in his prodigious skill with the knife. As Richard Hamilton later commented: . . .
‘one only has to see the ‘As Is When’ series to appreciate Chris Prater is the
greatest stencil cutter around’. Eduardo enjoyed the collaborative
aspects of working with Chris and his technicians, apparently valuing their
contributions to the finished product – this being very much opposed to the
traditional concept of the artistic genius working in splendid isolation and in
sole control of his output. Paolozzi was described
as being a dynamiter, applying, a knee to the groin of genteel middle-class
ideas about culture. More than anybody,
he was seen as having poured scorn on the romantic notion of the artist. All his work – the sculptures which came
together on the shop floor at Ipswich, as much as the graphics, realised for
him by the skills of professional printers, was an indication of this attitude.
A significant aspect of the approach was the variation of
colour for each image. In the colophon sheet included with the prints in
the Portfolio this is referred to: ‘The image is built up by multiple printings
through a colour chart, the final statement in each case varying according to
the programme of colour selection. This is possible only by the use of
precision techniques and photomechanical aids.’ Paolozzi and Prater had
first experimented with this concept in the 1963 prints, Metallization of a Dream (second
version) and Conjectures to Identity;
in As Is When this
was developed into a systematic routine such that no two prints of each image
are identical. According
to Pat Gilmour – author of several excellent books on printmaking – Paolozzi achieved
this by devising a permutation of no less than 88 colourways.
This
meant, paradoxically for a so-called’ mechanical’ process, that every image in
each edition was unique, playing havoc with craft maxims about
identicality. With a resounding tinkle,
the Guardian writer, (M. G. McNay), informed his readers that the secretary of the
Printmakers’ Council of Great Britain ‘barely tolerated’ Paolozzi’s suite. He also raised the stale Paris Biennale issue
again, hinting that the British Council had been wrong to send only
screenprints ‘in which photography was involved’ abroad and saying that in such
matters, the Printmakers’ Council felt itself ‘more qualified to judge’. This was typical of the constant barrage of uninformed
critical writing that screenprinting engendered.
Here are two further
versions of Artificial Sun to demonstrate colour variation:
