Dr. Pepper 1948

Eduardo Paolozzi made this collage, "Dr. Pepper," in 1948 from magazine cutouts, arranged on board. The medium itself speaks volumes. Paolozzi didn't use traditional fine art materials like paint or bronze. Instead, he scavenged images directly from the world of mass media. The appearance of "Dr. Pepper" is largely driven by the source materials, each fragment contributing its own texture, color, and form. The glossy sheen of magazine pages contrasts with the raw cardboard support. Paolozzi's process involved selecting, cropping, and layering these images, creating a disjunctive, dreamlike composition. But this wasn't just an aesthetic choice. Paolozzi was engaging with the rise of consumer culture, the seductive power of advertising, and the sheer volume of images flooding postwar society. The work involved a different kind of labor; not the skill of a painter, but the curatorial act of selection and juxtaposition. This challenges the traditional hierarchy separating the artist from the everyday world, inviting us to consider the social and political context of the images that surround us.