Prints by Eduardo Paolozzi: More on cars and titles

Those new to Paolozzi may well find many of his titles pretty puzzling; General Dynamic F.U.N. includes some of the most arcane – e.g. Astute sizing up perfume trends, (EA # 706). The following extract from a 1964 conversation between Paolozzi and Richard Hamilton (published in Robin Spencer’s Eduardo Paolozzi, Interviews and Writings) is pertinent both to cars and the creative relevance of a title. Paolozzi was working on an aluminium sculpture, Lotus, which features some tubular elements reminiscent of a Formula One racing car’s exhaust manifold/pipe system:

Hamilton: You have a very clear idea when you embark on a project, what it’s going to be. In fact, you even have a title for it; in this case, ‘LOTUS’. The word ‘Lotus’ is already helping to form the image for you, and taking you to a certain kind of structure. This is the case with most things that you produce; that you have a thought, you have a word or a series of words which are associated with the object, and to which the object will be striving?

Paolozzi: Well, I think, of course, in England, what results is ‘racing car’; and without going back to the whole idea of irony in the use of words, I think when we’re talking about Diana, too, when I was a child, there was a bicycle called ‘Diana’. I think there’s also an air gun called ‘Diana’; but working in the environment of a factory, one likes the idea that there also has to be a nomenclature for the manufactured object. It runs all through manufactured objects . . . . But ‘Lotus’, for me, is the double meaning of the flower, and it has the symbolic meaning in the East; and also the racing car, I think a racing car that is called after a flower, is marvellous; but you also have battleships being called after Greek heroes, so are railway engines.

Now for the other five ‘car’ prints from General Dynamic F.U.N.

EA # 733 Pig or Person, it’s the same, Fortune plays a funny game: