Meet Philip Colbert: The British pop artist who became a lobster

euronews (in English)

Colbert's latest exhibition, 'HOUSE OF THE LOBSTER' at the National Archaeological Museum of Naples, merges his unique body of work with ancient antiquities from the museum's collection.  Euronews Culture caught up with the artist...

Transcript

00:00Hey Euronews culture, it's Philip Colbert here, aka The Lobster, welcome to my London

00:11studio, come on in.

00:12So I've got a few paintings I'm working on, I'm actually very excited because I'm about

00:23to present my latest museum exhibition at the Archaeological Museum of Naples.

00:28For me it's a very exciting exhibition personally because many of the works in that museum are

00:33in my mind like the blueprints of art history because of the great masterpieces of antiquity.

00:38Important pieces obviously for me are the Lobster Mosaic because it's one of the early

00:41great masterpieces featuring the lobster symbol and importantly the lobster symbol as a mortality

00:46symbol but also the great Alexander the Great's mosaic which is a masterpiece battle scene.

00:51So I've presented some new paintings, some new battle AI paintings, it's a sort of personal

00:57battle between my creativity and then creativity aided by AI.

01:02Also showing some new lobster sculptures and some marble sculptures again which are going

01:07to be shown in context to the masterpieces of antiquity marbles in the collection.

01:21The connection to the lobster species really came with I guess because growing up in Scotland

01:25I was very far away from Walt Disney and the pop world of America, I was very much

01:29rural Scotland so I didn't really have that connection to that creative world really and

01:34so I really I guess operated a lot of my imagination and I think the seaside was my equivalent

01:39of going to Walt Disney and these creatures like lobsters were these like alien like creatures

01:44which caught my imagination and the lobster as a bright red symbol of like mortality and

01:49surrealism really like struck me.

01:57For me the lobster is really a star symbol throughout art history, I mean it dates back

02:02to the early antiquity period where there were many frescoes and mosaics featuring the

02:07lobster.

02:08Fast forward into the Dutch still life period and the lobster appeared again as a very important

02:12mortality symbol and then obviously more laterally in the surrealist period Dali was obsessed

02:18with lobsters, obviously the lobster was almost his great muse, he made the lobster

02:22telephone and put the lobster on a dress, featured lobsters in many paintings.

02:26Many of his performative dinners would have these huge feasts of lobsters so he was very

02:30much also inspired by the surrealistic quality of the lobster.

02:38I think as an artist I think I'm like an art individualist, my lobster persona is really

02:43just a reflection of the freedom of artistic identity, like as an artist I'm free to really

02:48transcend and become a creation of my imagination really and I think the lobster is my own artistic

02:55shell.

02:56Hang on, I think I hear the phone, one second, hello, hi yes I'm actually just in the studio

03:08with Euronews Culture, you'd like to talk to them, it's Salvador Dali, he's very excited

03:17about my exhibition at the Archeological Museum and he'd like to give a quote, yes, yeah he

03:23said everyone should go and see the show as soon as they can, lobsters are from outer

03:28space and we have a lot to learn from them, yeah yes I agree, okay well I'll pass the

03:35quote on, thank you so much.

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