Saturday 28 February 2015

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:

EA # 737 Brainiac 5 no puede ganar contra tres maquinas:

EA # 729 Hermaphroditic Children from Transvestite Parents:   
  

EA # 718 Totems and Taboos of the Nine to Five Day:



EA # 705 Synthetic Sirens in the Pink Light District:


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