As Is When: A series of screen prints based on the life and writings of Ludwig Wittgenstein

by Eduardo Paolozzi

As Is When is Eduardo Paolozzi’s homage to the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein created after reading his biography written by George Vaughan Wright. Wittgenstein’s study of linguistic systems coincided with Paolozzi’s love of toys and games and influenced his approach to the “syntax” and “vocabulary” of picture-making. The work began as a series of collages whose components were drawn from Paolozzi’s vast collection of found printed ephemera, which included such diverse materials as Woolworth wrapping paper and clippings from engineering manuals. Each of them was accompanied by quotations from Wittgenstein’s own writings or passages from the biography book.

Paolozzi has described the prints as “a kind of combined autobiography”. The screenprint process was realised by Chris Prater of Kelpra Studio. Paolozzi credits Prater with “reinterpreting a series of collages into a sound homogenous graphic [that was].. highly innovative, highly inventive, or, in some cases, another art form.” The images in As Is When are considered by many to be the first Pop masterworks of screenprint in England. In the U.S., Warhol had only released isolated editions by this point, and important portfolios such as 11 Pop Artists and Grafik des Kapitalistischen Realismus were yet to happen.

The titles of the prints are as follows: Poster; Artificial Sun; Tortured Life; Experience; Reality; Wittgenstein the Soldier; Wittgenstein in New York; Parrot; Futurism at Lenabo; Assembling Reminders for a Particular Purpose; The Spirit of the Snake; He must, so to speak, throw away the ladder; Wittgenstein at the Cinema Admires Betty Grable.

Publisher Editions Alecto, London, 1965
Edition of 65
12+1 screenprints

Place of Origin
London (issued)

Date
early 1965 (made)
1965 (issued)

Artist/maker
Paolozzi, Eduardo (Sir), born 1924 - died 2005 (artist)

Materials and Techniques
Screen print

Marks and inscriptions
Impressed with the publisher's stamp.

'AS IS WHEN / A series of screen prints based on the life and writings of Ludwig Wittgenstein / EDUARDO PAOLOZZI'
Lettered in pink and blue above the central image.

'Editions Alecto London May 1965'
Lettered in pink below the central image.

Dimensions
Height: 96.5 cm, Width: 66 cm

Descriptive line
'As Is When, 1965'. Screen print poster advertising an exhibition of screen-prints by Eduardo Paolozzi, held at Editions Alecto, London, May 1965. Designed by the artist, Great Britain, early 1965.

Genres: Art

13 pages, Unknown Binding

Published May 1, 1965

About the author

Sir Eduardo Luigi Paolozzi CBE RA was a Scottish sculptor and artist. He was one of the pioneers of pop art.

Reviews

[João · Rating 5 out of 5]

The earliest conceptual popart-book from the United Kingdom is Paolozzi's beautiful homage to Wittgenstein. It is a visual djset mixing abstract and funky collages with cut-off text containing many excerpts from Wittgenstein's masterpieces' Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922) and the Philosophical Investigations (1953) and from biographies made about him. The whole work is a literal take on the Wittgensteinian concept of logical pictures and the notable picture theory of language, i.e. "The logical picture of the facts is the thought".

A plate titled "The tortured life of an influential modern philosopher: the late Ludwig Wittgenstein" was my favorite, it truly invokes the abstract obsession of thinking within the frameworks of Logic and the fundamentals of Mathematics, Symbols and Linguistics.