I
feel that Paolozzi himself had a similar view.
Like most significant artists, he constantly sought to develop his
artistic practice and find new forms of expression/technique. But, I believe his thinking naturally strayed
back to the heady days of As Is When,
UEV, etc, from time to time, and this
guided his eye and hand. As examples,
look at these two prints:
Blueprints for a New Museum, 1980
The
imagery and subject matter are familiar from the Sixties work. However, the representational images here do
not function quite so well in juxtaposition as in the older work without the abstract
pattern use, which somehow both unified the overall image and also defined
sub-fields. But, as so often in the
Fifties and Sixties, I sense that Eduardo’s Science
Fiction head was well and truly on and connected. And yet some of the objects which would have
been fantasies for the future not so long before, had become by 1980, relics to
display as if ancient, in a museum.
From
1998, nearing the end of his life, comes this lithograph, very much in the
style of the early Sixties prints and sculpture:
September 1998
Colour
use and form are to me classic Paolozzi, and all the better for that!
