Andy Warhol and Eduardo Paolozzi - I Want to be a Machine, at Modern Two, Edinburgh

Everyone thinks they know Andy Warhol. Jackie Kennedy. Marilyn Monroe. Campbell’s Soup. Fifteen minutes of fame. That’s about it, right? Not so. Like these 20th-century icons, Warhol’s work has seeped so much into the public consciousness that its overfamiliarity makes it almost invisible, or at least no longer noticeable. It’s a salutary lesson. There is much more to Warhol than public perception leads us to believe.

What’s commendable about this show is that it takes two artists (the other being Leith’s own Eduardo Paolozzi) and treats their prodigious output seriously. Despite the rather disappointingly thin catalogue, there’s a copious amount of information about both artists in written texts, books and photographs as well as the works themselves.

Paolozzi and Warhol were born within a few years of each other, the former in 1924 and the latter in 1928. Despite their different backgrounds and training (Warhol studied at the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh, while Paolozzi attended Edinburgh College of Art and the Slade), some of their ideas and concerns converged in their interest in popular culture and the way technology played an increasingly important part in our lives. Both embraced the idea that imagery that can be rapidly reproduced in great quantity seriously questions the role of the artist and the craftsman, but also opens up great opportunities.

Warhol and Paolozzi understood the importance of draughtsmanship and became adept in drawing and the basic “grammar” of the artist. It underpinned their work — Warhol as a printmaker and designer, and Paolozzi also as printmaker and as a sculptor.

What makes this show so valuable is the insight it provides into their early development. Warhol majored in pictorial design at the Carnegie Institute and an early work, when he was 20, Cano, shows his already assured compositional sense and his passion for the printed and duplicated image. Cano demonstrated what became Warhol’s trademark “blotted line” technique whereby a monoprint was created by pressing a blank piece of paper onto an inked surface.

As a student Paolozzi was greatly influenced by the French purist artist Amédée Ozenfant who believed that there was no disconnect between the ancient cultures of the past and contemporary life. To illustrate such philosophical beliefs, Paolozzi created a number of collages that merged images of classical Greek friezes with imagery of modern machinery. Such techniques became a hallmark of Paolozzi’s style, which found three-dimensional expression in his sculpture.

This is a rare chance to see the work of two great artists under one roof and to be immersed in their parallel, but distinct, routes of artistic evolution. Both embraced, rather than rejected, the technologically complex, image-rich world in which they found themselves.

Until June 2, 2019