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Request to view at the Prints & Drawings Study Room, level E , Case MP, Shelf 139, Box B

Moonstrips Empire News

Print
1967 (made)
Artist/Maker
Place of origin

One screenprint from a complete set of the 'Moonstrips Empire News' series. The titled sheets are signed in pencil with the artist's name, and numbered 70/100. Stamped on the back with title.


Object details

Category
Object type
TitleMoonstrips Empire News (series title)
Materials and techniques
Screenprint
Brief description
Screenprint by Edward Paolozzi from the 'Moonstrips Empire News' portfolio of 100 prints. Great Britain, 1967.
Physical description
One screenprint from a complete set of the 'Moonstrips Empire News' series. The titled sheets are signed in pencil with the artist's name, and numbered 70/100. Stamped on the back with title.
Dimensions
  • Height: 38cm
  • Width: 25cm
Credit line
Acquired from Editions Alecto Ltd., London in 1968.
Object history
Moonstrips Empire News (1967), takes the form of 100 photolithographs and screenprints, originally sold in a tinted perspex box. Free association coupled with surrealism and pop culture determines the relationship between image and text in this series, with Paolozzi's influences encompassing Marcel Duchamp, Disney, William Burroughs, and the juggernaut of rapidly expanding American consumerism in the mid 20th century.
Bibliographic references
  • The following text is an excerpt from 'The Complete Prints of Eduardo Paolozzi' by Rosemary Miles, V&A publications, 1977: 'From now on the concern with the evolution of language, both pictorial and verbal, is a constant one. In 1966 Roland Barthes wrote "the present pre-eminence of linguistic problems is irritating to some people who see it as an excessive fashion, however, we have to discover language just as we are in the process if discovering space. Our century will perhaps be marked by these two explorations". Moonstrips is composed of written as well as visual images. Paolozzi has already experimented with 'writing' in 1962 with 'Metafisikal Translations' and had written articles for 'Uppercase'.... Paolozzi used the same principle of collage in composing phrases, paragraphs, and chapters as in composing pictures. Fragments of texts were ready-made, from articles, books and magazines, so the result is not so much original writing as original editing. It reads like a mixture of Joyce, Burroughs and Roussel. Much of the content is spoofing and not intended to be taken seriously but inherent in these works and developed progressively was the desire to expand the possibilities of free association and lateral thinking.... In Moonstrips, conventional binding and editor were eliminated altogether. The reader is presented with a box of 100 loose leaf sheets he can arrange and rearrange in any order, any number of times. To some extent this relied on ideas presented in Duchamp's 'Green Box' (1934)'.
  • Taken from Departmental Circulation Register 1968
  • Taken from Departmental Circulation Register 1968
Collection
Accession number
CIRC.438-1968

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Record createdJune 30, 2009
Record URL
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