Four Corners Books, 2009, Softcover (plastic), 80 pages + essay booklet, 24 × 17 cm
Contribution by David Brittain
Gorillas, guns, robots and sex are at the heart of Eduardo Paolozzi's work for the innovative British literary magazine Ambit. From 1967 onwards, the artist used its pages for some of his most experimental and innovative creations, pushing at the boundary between text and image. Collages, visual essays and fragments from novels, drawing on pop culture images from newspapers, magazines and advertisements. Reprinted in their entirety for the first time, Paolozzi’s works for Ambit tackle the war in Vietnam, the acceleration of Japanese technology, and the utopias of mass advertising.
The Jet Age Compendium reproduces the Paolozzi pages from Ambit along with magazine covers, poems and advertisements that originally appeared alongside the artist’s work. The book is housed in a day-glo pink sleeve that also contains an essay which puts Paolozzi’s work for the magazine into context.
