Ann’s
record of the ‘event’ has an ongoing theme wherein the ‘students’ feel
dissatisfaction with the lack of instruction/direction by Paolozzi. Coupled with his apparent lack of manners –
what we’d now call ‘interpersonal skills’ – the Artist is portrayed as
antipathetic, hostile even.
It
is said that the most technically gifted footballers cannot be good coaches
because of a lack of patience: they just can’t understand why their pupils are
unable to perform with the brilliance they themselves do. And with Paolozzi you have a man who has
spent a lifetime building up ideas/concepts and repositories of objects and
imagery – component materials with which he is ready to work in novel and
refreshing ways at the drop of a hat.
Little wonder that he was frustrated by a group of mature ‘students’ who
seemed to be wanting to be told ‘what to do’!
Paolozzi
told the group that they would ‘learn’ by an osmosis-like process facilitated
by being in his company. That seems
entirely logical. All that is unfathomable
to me is why Paolozzi would have agreed to conduct the masterclass at all – I can’t
see what was in it for him.
Incidentally,
in response to Paolozzi’s suggestion that the class goes to the library to read
what’s been written about him, Ann says that he hadn’t written much
himself. That’s not so – for starters you’ll
be more than a day or two working your way through the book, Eduardo Paolozzi: Writings and Interviews edited
by Robin Spencer. This book alone will
tell you far more about Paolozzi than the recent monograph by Judith Collins which
Ann advocates: it is a disappointing book for its superficiality and absence of
fresh insight and interpretation of Paolozzi’s ideas and imagery.
Ann’s
account is fascinating and the photographs add immediacy. If you already ‘know’ Paolozzi you won’t
learn much you don’t already know, but it will add what used to be referred to
in painting classes at my Sixties Art Schools as ‘local colour!’.
