The Ultimate Planet (from 'Bunk' portfolio) by Eduardo Paolozzi, screenprint

While in the late-1940s austerity measures persisted in Britain, American commodities and advertising, by contrast, reflected the USA’s economic and cultural dominance. They also reflected America’s popular imagination inspired by the emerging jet and space age.

Eduardo Paolozzi explored this when, to compile his Surrealist-inspired collages, he acquired magazines from ex-US servicemen in Paris as well as from shops in the East End of London. He made these collages between 1947 and 1952. In 1952 he showed them in a slideshow for fellow members of the Independent Group, an inter-disciplinary group of artists, architects, writers and critics who later, as rationing ended, defined everyday visual culture as ‘Pop’ – ‘expendable’, ‘mass-produced’, 'young', and ‘sexy’. Twenty years later, when he staged a solo retrospective exhibition at the Tate Gallery, Paolozzi editioned these works as a portfolio of prints. Titling the portfolio 'Bunk', he reflected on Henry Ford's famous statement that 'History is more or less bunk ... We want to live in the present'. Purchased from the artist in 1987. Copyright: Trustees of the Paolozzi Foundation, licensed by DACS.