Paolozzi and the Diverse Manners of Ornamenting Wittgenstein in the Arts

Abstract

Considering the body of “wittgensteinian” works by Paolozzi, this chapter starts analysing their illustrative level and focuses on the most clearly figurative aspects of Paolozzi’s work, in order to allow establishing links between the narrative aspects of those images. Del Puppo notes a kind of continuity between these figures made on silkscreen, by means of collages of images and texts, and the informal sculptures produced a decade before by Paolozzi. The assumption is that the artist attempted to overcome the constraint of prefabricated materials and casts, or impressions, to convey a poetic image. The main aspect is therefore the technique—and certainly not the aesthetics—of collage, whereas the creative potential of collage is increased, and not reduced, by the limits of the manipulation of its components. Eventually the chapter finds Paolozzi as a precursor in the use of Wittgenstein’s thinking as a leading argument for the emancipation from formalistic and existentialist aesthetics, related to the traditional concept of beauty and taste of Clement Greenberg.