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拍品专文
Josephine Baker (1906-1975), American-born French expatriate singer and dancer, cabaret artiste and movie star, Civil Rights activist and international symbol of black emancipation, became Paolozzi's first historical female portrait. In the summer of 1948 Paolozzi wrote in a letter from Rome that he had just seen Josephine Baker. Many versions of the head of Josephine Baker were developed at the same time as portraits of the fictional "Maria", the anti-heroine of Fritz Lang's film Metropolis of 1927. But unlike the smooth-complexioned features of Paolozzi's seductress "Maria", Josephine Baker's head and hairstyle evoke the jazz-age fashions of the late 1920s. The stylised Art Deco antecedents of Paolozzi's portrait head include Eastre, the brass head of 1924 by the Scottish artist John Duncan Fergusson, a cast of which Paolozzi owned in the mid-1970s, in an exchange made with the dealer Anthony d'Offay for a cast of Paolozzi's own highly polished bronze Crash Head of 1970. Two plaster Maquettes for Josephine Baker I and II, 50 cm. high, and an armless bronze Mannequin, 87 cm. high, in an edition of 3, were shown in the Paolozzi exhibition at the Jason Rhodes Gallery in October - November 1997 (nos. 5-7), but the present work was never exhibited in Paolozzi's lifetime. However a nine foot high bronze version in contraposto, commissioned by Vittorio Radice in 1997, stands in the cosmetics hall of Selfridges, Oxford Street.
For a full catalogue note by Robin Spencer please see www.christies.com.cn
In subject, cultural references, and form, Study for a Portrait of Josephine Baker not only brings together the innovatory strands, both biographical and art historical, which inform Paolozzi's sculpture over a long career, but also takes them to an entirely new level.
Female subjects are rare in Paolozzi's sculpture. His Female Warrior is armed with a mechanical disc or shield similar to the one in the hands of his own portrait Self-portrait with a Strange Machine (a version of which was sold in these rooms on 17 November 2006, lot 156, for 102,000 pounds): both date from 1988. There is a strong sense that Female Warrior is the alter ego of Paolozzi's Self-Portrait
In any case new oppottunities presented themselves for Paolozzi to turn from self-portraits to female subjects in the 1990s. The circumstances of recording twenty hours of autobiographical reminiscences for the National Life Story in 1993-4 afforded him a chance to recall the heroes and heroines of art and popular culture which had meant so much to his early life, first in Edinburgh between the wars, and then in London and Paris in the later 1940s. The elaborate installation Arche Noah staged in the Puppentheatermuseum, Stadtmuseum, Munich, in 1990, required a large cast of female characters, and even included a ten-piece Lady Robot Orchestra, half-life size, complete with robot conductor. Spellbound, an exhibition about art and the cinema, held at the Hayward Gallery in 1996, included Paolozzi's Jesus Works and Store, an autobiographical journey in three dimensions through a lifetime's memory of moving images.
Josephine Baker (1906-1975), American-born French expatriate singer and dancer, cabaret artiste and movie star, Civil Rights activist and international symbol of black emancipation, became Paolozzi's first historical female portrait. In the summer of 1948 Paolozzi wrote in a letter from Rome that he had just seen Josephine Baker. Many versions of the head of Josephine Baker were developed at the same time as portraits of the fictional 'Maria', the anti-heroine of Fritz Lang's film Metropolis of 1927. But unlike the smooth-complexioned features of Paolozzi's seductress 'Maria', Josephine Baker's head and hairstyle evoke the jazz-age fashions of the 1920s. The stylised Art Deco antecedents of Paolozzi's portrait head include Eastre, the brass head of 1924 by the Scottish artist John Duncan Fergusson, a cast of which Paolozzi owned in the mid-1970s, in an exchange made with the dealer Anthony d'Offay for a cast of Paolozzi's own highly polished bronze Crash Head of 1970. By referencing the work of Fergusson, Paolozzi adds another biographical allusion of his Scottish upbringing. Two plaster Maquettes for Josephine Baker I and II, 50 cm. high, and an armless bronze Mannequin, 87 cm. high, in an edition of 3, were shown in the Paolozzi exhibition at the Jason Rhodes Gallery in October - November 1997 (nos. 5-7), but the present Study for a Portrait of Josephine Baker was never exhibited in Paolozzi's lifetime.
Study for a Portrait of Josephine Baker shows the dancer in repose, misaligned at waist and thighs and standing on high heels, while the nine foot high bronze version, commissioned by Vittorio Radice as an appropriate symbol of modernity for the cosmetics hall of Selfridges, Oxford Street, represents her in animated contrapposto. But it is the formal configuration of head and body, of bronze and plaster, and the dividing strips of cut bronze, which make Study for a Portrait of Josephine Baker so arresting and unique in Paolozzi's sculpture. Since 1988, the year of Female Warrior, Paolozzi had inserted wooden strips in his plaster figures, to articulate their muscles and joints for translation into bronze, a development most evident in Newton, culminating in the monumental version for the British Library. Like the Josephine Baker for Selfridges, this was also installed in 1997. The principle of the 'cut' was the major innovation Paolozzi brought to 20th Century sculpture, and became his signature style. It originated in his parallel activity as a collagist and printmaker, as an alternative to the processes of carving and modelling, which had previously informed debates about 20th Century sculpture. In Study for a Portrait of Josephine Baker Paolozzi introduced an entirely new twist to the innovation he had already pioneered. Unfortunately, he only had time to develop it in a final series of heads, before his last illness overtook him in the summer of 2000.
We are very grateful to Robin Spencer for providing this catalogue entry.
For a full catalogue note by Robin Spencer please see www.christies.com.cn
In subject, cultural references, and form, Study for a Portrait of Josephine Baker not only brings together the innovatory strands, both biographical and art historical, which inform Paolozzi's sculpture over a long career, but also takes them to an entirely new level.
Female subjects are rare in Paolozzi's sculpture. His Female Warrior is armed with a mechanical disc or shield similar to the one in the hands of his own portrait Self-portrait with a Strange Machine (a version of which was sold in these rooms on 17 November 2006, lot 156, for 102,000 pounds): both date from 1988. There is a strong sense that Female Warrior is the alter ego of Paolozzi's Self-Portrait
In any case new oppottunities presented themselves for Paolozzi to turn from self-portraits to female subjects in the 1990s. The circumstances of recording twenty hours of autobiographical reminiscences for the National Life Story in 1993-4 afforded him a chance to recall the heroes and heroines of art and popular culture which had meant so much to his early life, first in Edinburgh between the wars, and then in London and Paris in the later 1940s. The elaborate installation Arche Noah staged in the Puppentheatermuseum, Stadtmuseum, Munich, in 1990, required a large cast of female characters, and even included a ten-piece Lady Robot Orchestra, half-life size, complete with robot conductor. Spellbound, an exhibition about art and the cinema, held at the Hayward Gallery in 1996, included Paolozzi's Jesus Works and Store, an autobiographical journey in three dimensions through a lifetime's memory of moving images.
Josephine Baker (1906-1975), American-born French expatriate singer and dancer, cabaret artiste and movie star, Civil Rights activist and international symbol of black emancipation, became Paolozzi's first historical female portrait. In the summer of 1948 Paolozzi wrote in a letter from Rome that he had just seen Josephine Baker. Many versions of the head of Josephine Baker were developed at the same time as portraits of the fictional 'Maria', the anti-heroine of Fritz Lang's film Metropolis of 1927. But unlike the smooth-complexioned features of Paolozzi's seductress 'Maria', Josephine Baker's head and hairstyle evoke the jazz-age fashions of the 1920s. The stylised Art Deco antecedents of Paolozzi's portrait head include Eastre, the brass head of 1924 by the Scottish artist John Duncan Fergusson, a cast of which Paolozzi owned in the mid-1970s, in an exchange made with the dealer Anthony d'Offay for a cast of Paolozzi's own highly polished bronze Crash Head of 1970. By referencing the work of Fergusson, Paolozzi adds another biographical allusion of his Scottish upbringing. Two plaster Maquettes for Josephine Baker I and II, 50 cm. high, and an armless bronze Mannequin, 87 cm. high, in an edition of 3, were shown in the Paolozzi exhibition at the Jason Rhodes Gallery in October - November 1997 (nos. 5-7), but the present Study for a Portrait of Josephine Baker was never exhibited in Paolozzi's lifetime.
Study for a Portrait of Josephine Baker shows the dancer in repose, misaligned at waist and thighs and standing on high heels, while the nine foot high bronze version, commissioned by Vittorio Radice as an appropriate symbol of modernity for the cosmetics hall of Selfridges, Oxford Street, represents her in animated contrapposto. But it is the formal configuration of head and body, of bronze and plaster, and the dividing strips of cut bronze, which make Study for a Portrait of Josephine Baker so arresting and unique in Paolozzi's sculpture. Since 1988, the year of Female Warrior, Paolozzi had inserted wooden strips in his plaster figures, to articulate their muscles and joints for translation into bronze, a development most evident in Newton, culminating in the monumental version for the British Library. Like the Josephine Baker for Selfridges, this was also installed in 1997. The principle of the 'cut' was the major innovation Paolozzi brought to 20th Century sculpture, and became his signature style. It originated in his parallel activity as a collagist and printmaker, as an alternative to the processes of carving and modelling, which had previously informed debates about 20th Century sculpture. In Study for a Portrait of Josephine Baker Paolozzi introduced an entirely new twist to the innovation he had already pioneered. Unfortunately, he only had time to develop it in a final series of heads, before his last illness overtook him in the summer of 2000.
We are very grateful to Robin Spencer for providing this catalogue entry.