Wednesday 3 December 2014

Paolozzi Masterclass- introduction-1996

Paolozzi having his hand cast in plaster during the Masterclass at Edinburgh College of Art, 1996




Paolozzi Revealed
Ten days with a creative Titan
– Ann Shaw

WHEN, in 1995, the art historian Judith Collins asked the sculptor Eduardo Paolozzi, how he was, he replied:  “Edging towards immortality.” Was it tongue-in-cheek? She does not know.

    A year later I signed up for his Masterclass at Edinburgh College of Art. This rare opportunity to work with one of the great artists of the 20th century came about by pure serendipity, something that Paolozzi himself would have approved of.  After a career in journalism, latterly with the Glasgow Herald, I had decided in mid-life to fulfil the dream of becoming an artist. For years I had attended numerous day and evening classes, workshops and summer schools, in Scotland and London, and I had even taken a month’s Sabbatical at a painting school in France.

    So when I heard that Paolozzi was going to run a class at Edinburgh College of Art I put my name forward.  Potential candidates were asked to submit a statement of why they wanted to study with him and if he liked what was said they would be accepted.

    Thus on Saturday July 15 1996 I began 10 days of working with Paolozzi. These days would have a greater influence on me than any time I was later to spend as a student at Glasgow School of Art and the School of the Art Institute in Chicago. Paolozzi asked us to keep a diary of our time with him. What follows is an unabridged account of his Masterclass.

    How will history view him?  He died in 2005 and the publication of the monograph ‘Paolozzi’, by Judith Collins, published in 2014, places him firmly among the great European artists of the 20th century alongside Giacometti, Leger, Jean Arp, Tristan Tzara, Brancusi, Dubuffet and Braque, all of whom he had met while working in Paris in the 1940s.

    He was born in Leith, Edinburgh in 1924 to Italian parents who ran a shop. There was little to indicate in his early years that he would one day become one of the outstanding sculptors of the 20th century. His influence can still be seen today among younger generations of graphic artists as they seek to illustrate the world of technology, which so fascinated Paolozzi, a world where man and machine are beginning to mesh and robots play an increasingly important role in our lives.

    Some of his key sculptures illustrate this well. They include “The Artist as Hephaestus” a self portrait where he sees himself in the guise of the Greek god of technology, fire and metal (now in a private collection), “Vulcan” a huge welded steel plate sculpture which occupies the central area of the Dean Gallery, in the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, and “Newton after Blake” outside the British Library, London.

    Many people will be familiar with the Tottenham Court Road Underground mosaics in London (1986) and his colourful collages. He was known as the King of British Pop Art, a label he strenuously denied, not surprisingly since his work encompassed a far greater breadth of vision than pop culture. An incorrigible collector, he revealed in his studios a magpie like mind stretching from tribal art to the detritus of modern packaging, which he later incorporated into his vast collection of collages and prints.

    On one hand he seemed to be an outsider, a maverick, a European not fitting easily into the British art establishment until in his later years they finally embraced this working-class Italian-Scot and showered accolades on him. He became Her Majesty’s Sculptor in Ordinary for Scotland in 1986 and was awarded a KBE and knighted in 1988.

    For Paolozzi was a European long before it became fashionable or acceptable. He knew from an early age he had to reach beyond Scotland, then England if he was to fulfil his potential. And for a number of years he worked in Paris, America and Germany.

    Yet it is clear from his enormous body of work that this complex artist and unique cultural figure was indeed working at the heart of the British establishment, a man who knew how to network long before the term became widely used, a sculptor making accessible art for the public domain, linking the past with the present and foretelling in some prescient way our futures driven by technology.

*Eduardo Paolozzi,  (1924-2005) monograph, Judith Collins, published by Lund Humphries with the support of the Paolozzi Foundation.

(end)

Friday 25 April 2014

Masterclass with Paolozzi- 1996
Were you on the Masterclass with Eduardo Paolozzi in 1996?
Would you like to contribute to a book about the 10 days we spent with him?
If so contact me – Ann Shaw-
 email- annshaw@mac.com, or text/mobile-07543 671260 or through my web-site: www.annshaw.co.uk
Meanwhile I am putting up extracts from my own diary with him.




  Day One:
  We are just digesting this when a tired, heavy-built old man, looking more like a blacksmith, wanders in.

 It’s Paolozzi.

“I have been up since 5 o clock this morning,” he growls sitting in the empty seat next to me.


   Geraldine rushes to get him a cup of coffee. He takes it without a word of thanks.  “I was wondering what you had in mind for our students.” Geraldine is the epitome of Edinburgh politeness.

   Paolozzi snarls, without bothering to look at her: “I am not going to be pushed around by you or anybody."

   An uneasy silence falls over the café. “Get back to the studio. I will see you in five minutes.”

   We shuffle to our feet and walk back. Nobody speaks.

A few minutes later he joins us and without any social niceties launches straight into a history of 20th century art, until he sees Geraldine lurking in a corner.
 “ Surrealism was a major force…” he stops. “You can get back to your office and do some more faxes, or whatever it is that you do.”

   Geraldine leaves trying to make a joke of her dismissal: “I know when I’m not wanted.”


   My throat is dry. I swallow. What have I let myself in for? There are no chairs. We stand for one hour while Paolozzi launches into a lecture on modem art.

Tuesday 22 April 2014

Masterclass with Paolozzi- 1996
Were you on the Masterclass with Eduardo Paolozzi in 1996?
Would you like to contribute to a book about the 10 days we spent with him?
If so contact me – Ann Shaw-
 email- annshaw@mac.com, or text/mobile-07543 671260 or through my web-site: www.annshaw.co.uk
Meanwhile I am putting up extracts from my own diary with him.




"Paolozzi is all about the unexpected - as anyone brave enough to sign up for his Masterclass in Edinburgh this summer will quickly discover” – art critic Iain Gale. The Independent


Day One:
“You will learn by a process of osmosis”

   We stand in the big, white, empty sculpture studio of Edinburgh College of Art waiting for Paolozzi, the grand old man of British sculpture, with whom we are going to work with over the next ten days.

We’re a mixed bunch from professional artists and art students to a retired teacher, doctor, surgeon and a collection of “others”.
I fall into the “others” category – a journalist about to give up work on the Glasgow Herald to go as a mature student to Glasgow School of Art. Am I making a mistake? Will I regret it?

But where is Paolozzi? It’s 9.30 and Geraldine Prince, art historian and course arrives. “His flight from Paris has been delayed. I suggest you all go and have a coffee.”

   En route to the café I see a poster advertising “Masterclass with Paolozzi” and a student scribbled on it:” Be afraid…be very afraid.”

   We sit and drink coffee. “Do you think he is as ferocious as his reputation says,” I ask a bearded young man next to me.” He nods.

  Geraldine hands us a programme for the next ten days with the caveat: “He may well tear all this up once he sees it”. (He does).