Page 40 - Studio International - October 1970

Speculative illustrations

Eduardo Paolozzi
in conversation with J.G.Ballard and Frank Whitford

distinction between the inner world of the mind
and the outer world of reality. But one, the
world of the mind, is largely ruled by the laws
of fiction, by one's dreams, visions, impressions
and so on, and the whole idea of the unconscious
as a narrative stage. Surrealism moulds the two
worlds together, remakes the external world of
reality in terms of the internal world of fantasy
and fiction. Now what has happened, and one
reason why there are really no Surrealist
painters in the true sense of the term today, is
that this position has been reversed. It's the
external world which is now the realm, the
paramount realm of fantasy. And it's the
internal world of the mind which is the one node
of reality that most of us have. The fiction is all
out there. You can't overlay your own fiction
on top of that. You've got to use, I think, a much
more analytic technique than the synthetic
technique of the Surrealists. Eduardo does this
in his graphics. He's approaching the subject-
matter of the present-day exactly like the
scientist on safari, looking at the landscape,
testing, putting sensors out, charting various
parameters. The environment is filled with
more fiction and fantasy than any of us can
Eduardo Paolozzi, whose current exhibition at BALLARD: There's something about Surrealism singly isolate. It's no longer necessary for us
the Tate Gallery is, surprisingly, the first which touched the whole Puritan conscience. individually to dream. This completely cuts
large-scale showing of his work in this country, It's a variety of Symbolism I suppose, a the ground from under all the tenets of classical
has known the novelist J. G. Ballard for some 20th-century variety using psychoanalysis as its Surrealism. Why I admire Eduardo is because
time. Both artist and writer have many interests main language. And if you accept as a definition he's made within the span of his own lifetime
in common. Both are fascinated by technology, of a symbol that it represents something which as an adult sculpture and graphic art which is a
by the predicament of the individual in a highly the mind tries to shield itself from you can complete turnabout. I mean that he's
mechanized society, and both explore the way understand why people in puritanical Northern accomodated himself to this change. From his
in which certain symbols and images can Europe and North America have always been early sculpture, where he was using the
precipitate complex chain-reactions in the uneasy in the face, not just of Surrealism, but of technique appropriate at the time of overlaying
imagination. Both are also convinced that the Symbolism as a whole. What sort of incursion an external reality, the world of nuts and bolts
external world provides material more into the imaginative life of all the arts in England technology, with his own fantasies, he's gone
highly charged imaginatively and more and North America have the symbolist poets round now to the opposite position. He is now
humanly urgent than any fiction or fantasy. made—Rimbaud, Baudelaire, Jarry, and so on ? analysing external fictions.
Ballard, who wrote the introductory notes to Almost none. And the Surrealists get the same WHITFORD: And yet, Eduardo, you think that
Paolozzi's graphic series General Dynamic Fun, treatment. But I don't see myself working in a although it's all out there in the external world
has also been influenced as a writer by certain surrealist tradition at all because Surrealism it takes a creative leap in order to recognize
painters, as references in his work to specific was like Hollywood in a sense, was a what's out there, and that the majority of people
artists and descriptions of landscapes recalling one-generation movement. You can refer to the don't recognize, or are incapable of recognizing
specific paintings make plain. What follows is an Surrealists in connection with my own fiction, precisely what is there to be seen unless it's
edited version of a conversation between Ballard, but I certainly don't use the basic techniques of presented to them in a fine-art context. You
Paolozzi and myself conducted in Paolozzi's Surrealism, automatic writing, for instance. once pointed out to me the irony of the situation
studio in July of this year. We touched on many PAOLOZZI : I wouldn't quarrel with the use of the when we were in an appartment in New York
subjects, on Surrealism, on violence, on the word Surrealism in my case because, after all, full of Pop Art when all the real art, the truly
nature of reality and, especially, on it's the reason I went to Paris, to see the significant material, was just outside the window.
technology as the subject-matter for art of all Surrealists. Any book on Surrealism excites me PAOLOZZI : Yes, I keep thinking about that. But
kinds. Inevitably, much of the conversation still. I don't mind trying to extend the tradition. I'm also thinking about the way in which reality
otherwise concerned with technology was taken It's easier for me to identify with that tradition surpasses the fictions of even the wildest
up with discussions about whether or not the than to allow myself to be described by some imagination. Like a machine for milking a rat.
tape recorder was working properly. I began by term, invented by others, called Top', which Incredible, yet it actually exists.
putting it to Ballard that both he and Paolozzi immediately means that you dive into a barrel WHITFORD: But people are curiously unable,
are working within a surrealist tradition, a of Coca-Cola bottles. What I like to think I'm aren't they, to get outside the categories which
tradition which, especially in this country, has doing is an extension of radical Surrealism. have been imposed on them from the outside.
never been taken very seriously. BALLARD: Surrealism took one of its main They approach art with a very different kind of
FRANK WHITFORD inspirations from psychoanalysis, accepted the mental set from that with which they approach
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