Many seek after the good life; they seek a life of ease, wealth, and leisure—but is all that such a good thing? Scottish-born artist Eduardo Paolozzi doesn’t seem to think so, and he expresses as much in his pop-art piece, “Dr. Pepper”. In this work, Paolozzi explains that wealth and its resultant leisure produces hedonism and a complete lack of self-control. In attempting to demonstrate this to a first-world audience directly involved in such a phenomenon, Paolozzi employs a variety of means; between objective symbolism, haphazard organization of objects, and emphatic character design, Paolozzi leaves the audience agape as they take in his work of chaos.
When one views this piece, the eye is particularly drawn to the exaggerated nature of the characters involved. There is a woman split down the middle, one side of her clothed in a lovely dress and the other clad scantily as she appears to talk seductively on the phone. A primate-looking man emerges from an oven full of food and a man and woman, both in bathing suits, smile at one another. A speedster sits atop a motorcycle and grins wildly. All these individuals come together to illustrate an important concept: society in this age is savage. The bizarre design of these characters and their rather disturbing depictions serve to emphasize that with the luxury of the modern era comes a rekindling of harmful passion and a lack of self-restraint. Paolozzi brilliantly indicates that these characters are born of leisure as well, through the expensive clothing of the woman and the beach-going couple—these are attributes of wealth, to visit the seaside and to own fancy attire. Therefore, not only does Paolozzi portray his characters as wild, but he also clearly emphasizes their social and economic status to establish a definite message of the detriments of hedonism and how it reduces our humanity and creates an absence of civilization.
Beyond the physical characters and objects in the piece, there is a more subtle device present in Paolozzi’s work involving the way in which they are organized—the key concept here is that they aren’t. The objects in the piece are strewn about the painting, characters emerge from random areas, and not much seems to be carefully orchestrated. Yet there is a brilliance in this chaos; Paolozzi intentionally creates a hectic scene to display to the reader the psychosis of selfish living. On a more primal level, Paolozzi engages the viewer’s sense of order to make them uncomfortable and observe the lack of sanity in the painting. Though this device has nothing to do with the actual components of the work, it more subconsciously communicates to the reader the damage leisure causes and how it erodes a sense of self-control and civilized manner. In other words, now that Paolozzi has utilized the characters and objects in the scene to indicate to the reader his subject and theme, he incorporates a deep-level device to elicit an emotional response to the theme itself.
The final device present in this work is objective symbolism. As in many paintings, Paolozzi carefully includes objects to illustrate the time period of his work, the relationship between the audience and the characters in the painting, and to make a statement regarding these characters. It takes the keen eye to peel away from the characters and recognize the Dr. Pepper bottle at the bottom of the piece and the car immediately beside it—these again are status symbols of the first world. Few can afford the luxury of a stylish car or purchase soda on a regular basis. These two objects further demonstrate to the audience that the characters so wild and primal are actually members of high society. Even more difficult to observe is the item behind the young woman in the swimsuit: it is a slab of meat. At first glance this food item does not seem significant, as there is food throughout the piece. However, the cultural implications of meat here are important—it represents flesh to be torn and devoured like an animal. This may cause the reader and viewer to feel a sense of discomfort, yet this is exactly what Paolozzi wishes: he is implicitly stating that those partaking in luxury are consumed by their fleshly desires and seek biological urges. Notice here as well that this same idea is more tamely described by the nighttime clothing of the woman on the phone, and is now very graphically shown here. Thus, Paolozzi expresses to his audience that leisure produces a regression of humanity through objects in the painting that are really not what they appear.
Therefore, Eduardo Paolozzi aggressively convinces his audience that the lifestyle of the wealthy really is not an indicator of high society at all—in many ways it reduces the civility of man. Living for the day and experiencing the luxuries life has to offer is harmful, and Paolozzi ensures we understand this through character design and objective symbolism and organization. Rather a timely message, Paolozzi’s purpose is one which remains relevant today, particularly in the West—we must be careful how much we partake in life in the fast-lane; it might just cost us our self-control and humanity.
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