ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that Philip Guston and Eduardo Paolozzi’s play processes through notions of the absurd. For both Guston and Paolozzi, absurd processes are not merely the means by which to mock the powerful; slapstick allows us to see the comedy of the creative processes as rooted within a responsive engagement with material. While clowning can be seen as a protection against hubris and the creation of idols, in slapstick comedy there is also a battle between human and object in which the objects very often get the upper hand. Clowning processes can then be seen to both enable an animation of inanimate matter, while lampooning the very attempt, providing a way to engage with Guston’s sense that he was creating beings, while acknowledging this as an impossibility. Play is not only able to contain contradiction and duality but is also defined by it.
