Richard Rogers as Newton relates to an artistic project that Eduardo Paolozzi began in 1987, which later came to include a commission for the British Library. Paolozzi harboured a fascination for Isaac Newton whom he regarded as a pivotal figure in the development of Western thought. Newton was the scientist and mathematician who introduced order into a chaotic universe, providing laws to account for the motion of planets and observing for the first time that light is composed of coloured rays. One of the first appearances that Newton made in Paolozzi’s work was a plaster relief of 1987. The mechanical identity of that relief was evoked by large, bolt-like pivots depicted at the joints of the figure; Paolozzi cunningly used the same circular motif as the hinge of the compasses which Newton holds, thus attributing the same mathematical character to both the instrument and its user. In line with Paolozzi’s cultivated material eclecticism, that relief was subsequently worked with variations in alabaster and bronze.

In 1988, the relief was followed by a three-dimensional model depicting the same hunched figure. Each of Paolozzi’s three-dimensional Newton After Blake sculptures, including this work, belong to a continuum between cyborg and human figure types. This specific bronze cast demonstrates a strong mechanical quality: straps are nailed to his body, bolts set into his joints, and one of his hands is pierced by rods. The suggestion is that the figure was engineered rather than born. By contrast, an early bronze maquette of the subject is notably organic, the surface of the skin being unbroken and bestowed with a carefully defined musculature.

In the late eighties, Paolozzi’s figure of Newton was selected as a suitable monument to stand in the forecourt of the new British Library. He was friends with the library’s architect, Colin St John Wilson, who came across the Newton sculpture in Paolozzi’s studio one day. It satisfied Wilson’s criteria exactly, as he later explained:

'To give some flesh to my own thinking I had made a drawing of a monumental seated figure… but I had kept the idea to myself. Imagine then my delight when, some months later, on one of my visits to Eduardo’s studio, I saw the maquette of a monumental seated figure mysteriously leaning over to perform some strange ritual!'

Accordingly, Paolozzi made his Newton into a monumental, three-metre-high centrepiece. The project continued over an extended period until its unveiling in 1997. Paolozzi also used his figure of Newton in a variety of other configurations. A limited, unspecified number of unique plaster sculptures was produced, as well as an edition of six bronze sculptures that gave Newton a new head: the neo-classical portrait bust of the architect Richard Rogers, whom Paolozzi was commissioned to depict by the National Portrait Gallery in 1988. Paolozzi was a long-time admirer of Rogers’s work, and he had used the façade of the Centre Pompidou in a series of prints called Mein Kölner Dom—Blueprints for a New Museum (1980–81). In 1987, Paolozzi wrote: ‘I could imagine taking Richard Rogers’s Lloyd’s building, magically lifting it to a more open site and transforming it into a university for creative thinking.’

The imagery of Paolozzi’s Newton sculptures has an arcane art historical lineage. The composition of a hunched figure, manipulating a pair of compasses on the floor between his open legs, was initially suggested by William Blake’s colour monotype print of Newton. For Blake, Isaac Newton was the enemy of imagination, placing material limits on our perception of creation and the universe. Paolozzi himself explained this in an interview with Robin Spencer:

'The 1795 image of Sir Isaac Newton [...] has fascinated me for many years. Blake shows Newton surrounded by the glories of nature but, oblivious to the beauty, concentrates on reducing the universe to mathematical dimensions. Blake was no admirer of Newton and meant this work to be a critical assessment of the scientist's preoccupations. The work says different things to me. Here we have the work of two British geniuses presenting to us simultaneously nature and science – welded, interconnecting, interdependent. The link is the classically beautiful body of Newton crouched in a position reminiscent of Rodin’s Thinker [fig. 5]. Newton sits on nature, using it as a base for his work. His back is bent in work, not submission, and his figure echoes the shape of rock and coral. He is part of nature […].'

Beyond his response to Blake and Rodin, the classical ideal of a perfectly proportioned figure also informed Paolozzi’s sculpture of Newton. Blake’s Newton is depicted with a Michelangelesque musculature, and one of his sources for the print was in fact the figure of Abias, an ancestor of Christ, depicted in a lunette of Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel. Through Blake, Paolozzi absorbed a bold style of figural modelling from the celebrated Renaissance artist.

As well as manipulating a wide range of art historical precedents, Paolozzi is noted for his distinctive, personal adaptation of reproductive methods. He spoke of each sculpture being an individual work, whether it was a clay model or a cast of plaster or bronze. He would patinate each bronze himself and sometimes reworked the cast with files and other tools. Akin to Frankenstein’s monster, Paolozzi’s Newton is a carefully wrought, hand-worked sculpture, full of asymmetric vitality.

This cast, edition 3 of 6, was owned by Professor Rudolf Seitz, President of the Akademie der Bildenden Künste, Munich. The cast is inscribed on the base, ’For Rudi’. Seitz contributed a text to the catalogue accompanying the exhibition Eduardo Paolozzi: Recurring Themes, which was held at the Royal Scottish Academy in 1984. Paolozzi was Professor of Sculpture at the Akademie in Munich between 1981 and 1991, and they formed a friendship during that period.