Reality

Quoting from Kelpra Studio; The Rose and Chris Prater Gift; Artists’ Prints 1961-1980. Tate Gallery,1980:

‘Collage could be said to be the most characteristic technique of the twentieth century, applied to poetry, film, television, sculpture, music and graphics alike; it has been a way of life for Paolozzi.  Since he was a student, he has had a mania for collecting all manner of printed material.  When different pieces are juxtaposed they suggest a metaphor for the shifting, disordered random quality of everyday life.  Equally, he has enjoyed manipulating ‘the space/time thing . . . so that some of the images are separated by thirty years of yellowing in portfolios waiting for the day . . .’

In Reality we see such juxtaposition in matrix form, with less integration of the component images.  The result is the kind of ‘picture’ (of reality) Wittgenstein proposed in the Tractatus, from which the following quotations are included in the print:

2(06)  The sum total of reality is the world.

2 1     We picture facts to ourselves.

2 11    A picture presents a situation in logical space, the existence and non-existence of states of affairs.

2 12    A picture is a model of reality.

2 13    In a picture objects have the elements of the picture corresponding to them.

2 131  In a picture the elements of the picture are the representatives of objects.

2 14    What constitutes a picture is that its elements are related to one another in a determinate way.

2 141  A picture is a fact.

Paolozzi always wanted to overcome the ephemeral nature his collages had, stating that he was ‘anxious that my works should have a permanent quality . . .’.  Screenprinting, transposing ephemeral source matter from diverse places into a more lasting form, satisfied him on that score.