Man in a Motor Car

A great collector of advertisements culled from magazines—particularly colorful American ones for new household products and automobiles—Eduardo Paolozzi famously gave a lecture (the so-called “Bunk lecture”) in 1952, in which he projected a slide show of many of his collages constructed from these printed ads. The lecture consisted of images alone, with no commentary.

In many respects Paolozzi was one of the fathers of Pop Art, at least in Britain. As well as making paper collages, he would collect junk objects, particularly machine parts, electrical components, and mechanical toys. He then pressed such items into flat strips of soft wax where they would leave an impression before joining together the strips to create sculptures, later cast in bronze. This was the technique used to make Man in a Motorcar. Although the subject of the work is modern, the overall effect is more archaeological, as if the detritus of our present-day culture had been unearthed at a distant point in the future.