KING OF POP


world must concern himself with the contra- dictions of man and machine, with bizarre and hidden currents of antiquity, religion, and magic’. His ‘Icarus’ sculptures encapsulate this approach, marrying classical subject with the raw modernity of a surface structure created from casts of broken industrial forms.


The trauma of his wartime experience was never overtly referred to in Paolozzi’s work but it left its mark in his lifelong pacifi sm and his ongoing desire to seek interconnectivity and unity in all things. Everything, he felt, can be art, and therefore perhaps art is in everything. While his work is very much of the machine age it bears none of the horror and dystopia so often associated with the modern and the mechanised. His sculptural vision remained emphatically European, despite the graphic nods to America, and he embraced Germany in particular, taking up teaching positions in Cologne and Munich.


His later career saw him elevated to the


establishment he once countered. Knighted in 1988, he undertook multiple public art commissions which ranged from monumental sculptures, such as the fi gure of Newton which guards the British Library, to graphic mosaics on the Underground. He would have enjoyed seeing children scrambling over his sculptures in Edinburgh and elsewhere as it underlines his ambitions for art to offer an interactive connec- tion with the public, and also with nature – he incorporated hollows into works to catch


rainwater and provide impromptu birdbaths. Paolozzi died in 2005 and although he


spent most of his career outwith Scotland, he remains one of our most revered artists. He never forgot his Scottish roots, gifting to the National Galleries of Scotland the contents of his studio while a number of important works were also donated by the collector Gabrielle Keillor. Edinburgh therefore became home to an extraordinary, unrivalled collection of Paoloz- zi’s work much of which, including a recreation of his studio, can now be seen at Modern Two. Paolozzi believed the artist ‘must use his vision to open wider views to others’ and his home town is enormously fortunate to have so much of his unique vision at its disposal.


Above: Paolozzi’s Studio. Top: Paolozzi collage, Real Gold (1949).


FIELD


FACTS Paolozzi’s Studio can be seen at the Scottish Gallery of Modern Art, 75 Belford Rd, Edinburgh EH4 3DR www.national galleries.org


WWW.SCOTTISHFIELD.CO.UK 71


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