A Single Echo

Jones made another lithograph in similar style, The Lesson, in 1967. Printed by Mathieu in Zurich and published by Editions Alecto it was produced in an edition of 50:

One of the visual devices that was frequently explored in 60s art was the tiled (to indicate perspective) horizontal ‘surface’ as a fragment rather than as part of an integrated overall image representing a visual reality; for example in Peter Phillips 1968 screenprint, Christmas Eve:

This device provided a ready means by which the viewer could be engaged in a looking/thinking process testing the perception of the work as a flat surface/existential object versus the representation on it of a ‘picture’ imported from the outside world. The Lesson sums this up so well, visually and in its text:

Realism is simply the immediate comprehension of a set of pictorial conventions that, through perpetual use, have become familiar to everyone. This over-experience, has blunted out our sensativity (sic), and, in order to keep alert the lady in my illustration is doing her exercises. Repeat after me ‘this surface is flat’. 

Note also that ‘the lady’ – she’s reality, yes (?) – (the ‘floor’s just drawing, yes (?)) – has two shoes but only one leg, and, by the way, the drawing/colour filling of the tiles is incomplete; it sounds like a mess, but it’s a fascinating, very satisfying image.

The Full View – from the floor

Talking about the series, Jones explained:

The New Perspective on Floors was printed so that it was necessary to fold the paper 6 inches from the bottom in order for the image to be viewed correctly.  I liked the idea of folding a print.  Usually people who buy folios hardly ever thumb them – just pride of possession.  With these floors, nothing works unless they actually take out the prints and fold them each time.  That is some kind of commitment, when a collector has the responsibility of folding something for which he has paid money.  I had hoped, of course, that it would be a pleasurable task allowing him to participate in making the completed image.

This is quoted from Marco Livingstone’s text in Allen Jones Prints, Prestel, Munich, 1995.  This publication also provides the identification letter (title) for each print, as below:

36A

36B

36C

36D

36E

36F

Just found this excellent gallery shot at https://emmapeelpants.wordpress.com/:

Paolozzi’s ‘As Is When’

In February 1964, (the month in which The Beatles were recording Can’t Buy Me Love), Paolozzi made a work-note:  collage called the artificial sun; series of collage based upon Wittgenstein precepts.  The resulting images, published the following year, comprise the As Is When suite of screenprints – a ground breaking masterwork.

At this time, Paolozzi was 40 and best known for his sculpture and involvement with the proto-Pop Independent Group in London the mid-Fifties.  He had formed an interest in the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein in the early-Fifties and this developed significantly and with great personal empathy when he read Norman Malcolm’s Memoir, published in 1958.  Paolozzi found himself closely identifying himself and his art both with Wittgenstein’s philosophy and his, (problematic) life journey.  Initially, this resulted in sculptures such as Wittgenstein at Casino: the photograph below shows Paolozzi in 1964 in New York where this piece was on exhibition at MOMA:

Artificial Sun is the first of the 12 prints (plus Poster) and is dated 13^th May 1964.  It is one of the nine prints in the Suite based on Wittgenstein’s thinking; (the other three depict events/aspects of Wittgenstein’s life).  The incorporated statement: The world is all that is the case is a proposition from the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, the only work published, (in 1921), before Wittgenstein’s death in 1951.  In this reflection of his early philosophical thinking, Wittgenstein contended that a verbal proposition is a picture of reality.  So now consider the reality of Artificial Sun:

Much more at http://paolozzi.blogspot.co.uk/ also covering Universal Electronic Vacuum and Moonstrips Empire News series