a brown patinated bronze bust, mounted on an integral stepped plinth base, signed and dated to the bronze, numbered 2/2
39 x 28.5 x 21.5cm

Paolozzi’s fascination with the morphological aspects of the human head finds its roots in his 1950 busts of 'Mr. Cruikshank'. Inspired by a research dummy composed of wood and used to measure the penetration of X-rays into a human skull, Paolozzi’s Mr. Cruikshank sought to disrupt the traditional ideals of the portrait bust. Despite featuring elements of classical formalism and symmetry, Mr. Cruikshank bore an uncanny sense of ‘the other,' existing simultaneously in ancient and futuristic realms.

Amongst a series of bronze cast heads crafted by Paolozzi in the late 1980s, the present lot depicts American jazz pianist and bandleader, Count Basie, and is numbered 2/2 from an edition of three, with only two bearing numbered designations. Distinguished by their varied patinas, a green patinated version, numbered 1/2, is held at the Tate, whilst an unnumbered brown-green example forms part of the collection of the National Galleries of Scotland. It is in these works that Paolozzi demonstrates the full fruition of his explorations into the human head.

Mapping his collaging practice onto the three-dimensional object, Paolozzi’s Count Basie deconstructs the human face, pushing it towards the Rubicon of unrecognizability. Using found objects, including, appropriately for the subject, a mouth-shaped harmonica, the artwork adopts a hybrid identity, blending elements of both human and machine. Although the formal differences between Mr Cruikshank and Count Basie are dramatic, Paolozzi has borrowed and repurposed motifs from his earlier work, including the eyes of the former, which, on the latter, become enlarged and distorted.

Incorporating influences from Picasso's Cubism, the Dadaists' photomontage aesthetics, and Paolozzi's own studies into Surrealism, Count Basie illustrates the culmination of a lifetime obsession with classicism, the found object and the uneasy relationship between man and machine.