1967

In 1967 English Pop artist Eduardo Paolozzi (1924-2005) published a new series of screenprints called Moonstrip Empire News. Samples chosen here (from the Tate) are intended for happy comparison with the later (and less polished) Paolozzi screenprint series called Bunk, featured here.

As Is When

As Is When came out in 1965, a series by English Pop artist Eduardo Paolozzi (1924-2005). Of the bright copies preserved at the Tate, my own favorite from this group is the "trial proof" below, unbounded by the tight format of the finished pieces.

"The life and theories of the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein inspired this sequence of screenprints.  Each print includes quotations from Wittgenstein''s own writings or passages from a biography.  The collages of fragmented images relate to these texts. Paolozzi has described the prints as ''a kind of combined autobiography.''  His Italian background led him to identify with Wittgenstein as ''a foreigner in England,'' who shared an interest in engineering and a love of cinema.  He has also drawn parallels between Wittgenstein''s theories of language and his own artistic practice."

The museum offers this description without commenting on its irony. Yet the same fertility of ideas and the same highbrow influences that still work in Paolozzi's favor with curators also work against him with the public. Warhol set the template. Pop artists are supposed to be dimwits.

Egg Timer

On Friday the plastic egg timer happened to emerge from the toy box first – at the beginning of Mabel's morning playtime after breakfast. She invented an elaborate game that she alone fully understood. It involved flipping over the egg timer, running from one part of the room to another, and making faces.

The bead-in-a-maze puzzle took over after the egg timer began to wear thin, but making faces continued to be fun for a while longer.

Beach Bijoux

Friday morning Mabel and Daddy took MUNI out to San Francisco's Ocean Beach. They removed shoes and socks, walked in shallow water at the edge of the Pacific and picked up many objects from the sand. Daddy washed these after Mabel's nap, about the same time I came over to visit. And that is how I chanced to photograph the sorting and examination of each shell and bit of seaweed and rock.

If other examples were lacking, this one would be sufficient to indicate that Mabel has inherited the curatorial gene that has played a large part in the careers of more than one close relative.

Friday Afternoon

When I took this fuzzy picture we had just come back to Mabel's apartment with take-out food from the Pickle Store (her private name for the famous hamburger place Pearl's, where Mabel chooses her own thick wedges of dill pickle one by one from the bin). I took many other much less flawed pictures of this child in the course of the afternoon and evening, but this one (with serene, evaluative gaze) is my favorite.

And the peonies (expiring below). They get named and their white petals flushing pink get shown as my other Friday afternoon favorite sight in Mabel's apartment, to go with Mabel. Six months ago these pictures would have been completely impossible because at the same time of day the sun would have long since set and darkness would have already overtaken everything. That is the reason (or at least the main reason) why I like summer best.   

Kodachrome

At the end of Friday's playground time, there was the brushing of sand from feet before shoes and socks went back on for the walk home. I was playing with camera settings while Daddy and Mabel remained occupied and stationary under the strong sunlight of the late April afternoon. That is why the photos below gradually intensify in color until the bottom one reaches a near-facsimile of Kodachrome-style saturation.