Assembling Reminders for a Particular Purpose: Paolozzi’s Ephemera, Toys and Collectibles

Abstract

This chapter addresses the centrality of environmental installations in Paolozzi’s late production and the relevance that the practice of “assembling reminders for a particular purpose” holds in his understanding of the artist’s profession, further constituting another aspect of affinity with Wittgenstein. In order to do so, Mantoan examines three aspects that are instrumental to understand Paolozzi’s ‘collecting mood’ that led him to assemble a rich variety of items, ephemera, toys and objects of popular culture: the first one concerns the likely origins of this attitude, grounded in his childhood years, as well as in the influence of Parisian Surrealism and American mass culture; the second step is discussing the birth of the Krazy Kat Arkive, which represents the first attempt to organize and display his collectibles; the third aspect is analysing several environmental installations created with these assembled objects, especially his last project for the Spellbound exhibition at the Hayward Gallery in 1996. Mantoan demonstrates that Paolozzi registered the diverse processes going on in a philosopher’s mind as intended by Wittgenstein (e.g. assembling, comparing, connecting different ideas, forms and concepts) which in Paolozzi’s experience constituted the exact same processes of his artistic work, since both aimed at seeing things in a new way.