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 20^th 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 20^th 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 20^th 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.

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