Richard Hamilton (artist)
Encyclopedia
Richard William Hamilton, CH
(24 February 1922 – 13 September 2011) was a British painter
and collage
artist. His 1956 collage
, Just what is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing?
, produced for the This Is Tomorrow
exhibition of the Independent Group
in London, is considered by critics and historians to be one of the early works of pop art
.
, London. Despite having left school with no formal qualifications, he managed to gain employment as an apprentice working at an electrical components firm, where he discovered an ability for draughtsmanship
and began to do painting at evening classes at St Martin's School of Art. This led to his entry into the Royal Academy
Schools.
After spending the war
working as a technical draftsman, he re-enrolled at the Royal Academy Schools but was later expelled on grounds of "not profiting from the instruction", loss of his student status forcing Hamilton to carry out National Service
. After two years at the Slade School of Art, University College, London, Hamilton began exhibiting his work at the Institute of Contemporary Arts
(ICA) where he also produced posters and leaflets and teaching at the Central School of Art and Design.
's 1913 text On Growth and Form. In 1952, at the first Independent Group
meeting, held at the ICA, Hamilton was introduced to Eduardo Paolozzi
's seminal presentation of collages produced in the late 1940s and early 1950s that are now considered to be the first standard bearers of Pop Art. Also in 1952, he was introduced to the Green Box notes of Marcel Duchamp
through Roland Penrose
, whom Hamilton had met at the ICA. At the ICA Hamilton was responsible for the design and installation of a number of exhibitions including one on James Joyce
and The Wonder and the Horror of the Human Head that was curated by Penrose. It was also through Penrose that Hamilton met Victor Pasmore
who gave him a teaching post based in Newcastle Upon Tyne
which lasted until 1966. Among the students Hamilton tutored at Newcastle in this period were Rita Donagh
, Mark Lancaster
, Tim Head
, Roxy Music
founder Bryan Ferry
and Ferry's visual collaborator Nicholas De Ville. Hamilton's influence can be found in the visual styling and approach of Roxy Music.
Hamilton gave a 1959 lecture titled “Glorious Technicolor, Breathtaking Cinemascope and Stereophonic Sound,” a phrase taken from a Cole Porter
lyric in the 1957 musical “Silk Stockings.” In that lecture, which sported a pop soundtrack and the demonstration of an early Polaroid
camera, Hamilton deconstructed the technology of cinema to explain how it helped to create Hollywood’s allure. He further developed that theme in the early 1960s with a series of paintings inspired by film stills and publicity shots.
The post at the ICA also afforded Hamilton the time to further his research on Duchamp, which resulted in the 1960 publication of a typographic version of Duchamp's Green Box, which comprised Duchamp's original notes for the design and construction of his famous work The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even, also known as The Large Glass. Hamilton's 1955 exhibition of paintings at the Hanover Gallery were all in some form a homage to Duchamp. In the same year Hamilton organised the exhibition Man Machine Motion at the Hatton Gallery
in Newcastle. Designed to look more like an advertising display than a conventional art exhibition the show prefigured Hamilton's contribution to the This Is Tomorrow
exhibition in London
, at the Whitechapel Gallery
the following year. Just what is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing? was created in 1956 for the catalogue of This Is Tomorrow
where it was reproduced in black and white and also used in posters for the exhibit. The collage depicts a muscle-man provocatively holding a Tootsie Pop and a woman with large, bare breasts wearing a lampshade hat, surrounded by emblems of 1950s affluence from a vacuum cleaner to a large canned ham. Just what is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing? is widely acknowledged as one of the first pieces of Pop Art
and his written definition of what ‘pop' is laid the ground for the whole international movement. Hamilton's definition of Pop Art from a letter to Alison and Peter Smithson
dated 16 January 1957 was - "Pop Art is: popular, transient, expendable, low-cost, mass-produced, young, witty, sexy, gimmicky, glamorous, and Big Business" - stressing its everyday, commonplace values. He thus created collages incorporating advertisements from mass-circulation newspapers and magazines.
The success of This Is Tomorrow
secured Hamilton further teaching assignments in particular at the Royal College of Art
from 1957-61 where he promoted David Hockney
and Peter Blake
. During this period Hamilton was also very active in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
and produced a work parodying the then leader of the Labour Party Hugh Gaitskell
for rejecting a policy of unilateral nuclear disarmament. In the early 1960s he received a grant from the Arts Council
to investigate the condition of the Kurt Schwitters
'Merzbau' in Cumbria
. The research eventually resulted in Hamilton organising the preservation of the work by relocating it to the Hatton Gallery in the Newcastle University.
In 1962 his first wife Terry was killed in a car crash and in part to recover from this he travelled for the first time to the United States in 1963 for a retrospective of the works of Marcel Duchamp at the Pasadena Art Museum, where, as well as meeting other leading pop artists, he was befriended by Duchamp. Arising from this Hamilton curated the first and to date only British retrospective of Duchamp's work, and his familiarity with The Green Box enabled Hamilton to make copies of The Large Glass and other glass works too fragile to travel. The exhibition was shown at the Tate Gallery
in 1966.
From the mid-1960s, Hamilton was represented by Robert Fraser and even produced a series of prints Swingeing London based on Fraser's arrest, along with Mick Jagger
, for possession of drugs
. This association with the 1960s pop music scene continued as Hamilton became friends with Paul McCartney
resulting in him producing the cover design and poster collage for the Beatles' White Album
.
. Together they set about converting North End, a farm in the Oxfordshire
countryside, into a home and studios. "By 1970, always fascinated by new technology, Hamilton was redirecting advances in product design into fine art, with the backing of xartcollection, Zurich, a young company that pioneered the production of multiples with the aim of bringing art to a wider audience." Hamilton realised a series of projects that blurred the boundaries between artwork and product design including a painting that incorporated a state-of-the-art radio receiver and the casing of a Diab Computer. During the 1980s Hamilton again voyaged into industrial design
and designed two computer
exteriors: OHIO computer prototype (for a Swedish firm named Isotron, 1984) and DIAB DS-101 (for Dataindustrier AB
, 1986). As part of a television project Hamilton was introduced to the Quantel Paintbox
and has since used this or similar devices to produce and modify his work.
From the late 1970s Hamilton’s activity was concentrated largely on investigations of printmaking processes, often in unusual and complex combinations. In 1977-8 Hamilton undertook a series of collaborations with the artist Dieter Roth
that also blurred the definitions of the artist as sole author of their work.
In 1981 Hamilton began work on a trilogy of paintings based on the conflicts in Northern Ireland after watching a television documentary about the protest organised by IRA
prisoners in Long Kesh Prison, unofficially known as The Maze. The citizen (1981-83) shows IRA prisoner Bobby Sands
portrayed as Jesus, with long flowing hair and a beard. Republican prisoners had refused to wear prison uniforms, claiming that they were political prisoners. Prison officers refused to let "the blanket protesters" use the toilets unless they wore prison uniforms. The republican prisoners refused, and instead smeared the excrement on the wall of their cells. Hamilton explained (in the catalogue to his Tate Gallery
exhibition, 1992), that he saw the image of "the blanket man as a public relations contrivance of enormous efficacy. It had the moral conviction of a religious icon and the persuasiveness of the advertising man's dream soap commercial - yet it was a present reality". The subject (1988-89) shows an Orangeman, a member of an order dedicated to preserve Unionism in Northern Ireland. The state (1993) shows a British soldier undertaking solitary patrol on a street. The citizen was shown as part of "A Cellular Maze", a 1983 joint exhibition with Donagh.
Since the late 1940s Richard Hamilton has been engaged with a project to produce a suite of illustrations for James Joyce's Ulysses
. In 2002, the British Museum
staged an exhibition of Hamilton's illustrations of James Joyce
's Ulysses
, entitled Imaging Ulysses. A book of Hamilton's illustrations was published simultaneously, with text by Stephen Coppel. In the book, Hamilton explained that the idea of illustrating this complex, experimental novel occurred to him when he was doing his National Service
in 1947. His first preliminary sketches were made while at the Slade School of Art, and he continued to refine and re-work the images over the next 50 years. Hamilton felt his re-working of the illustrations in many different media had produced a visual effect analogous to Joyce's verbal techniques. The Ulysses illustrations were subsequently exhibited at the Irish Museum of Modern Art
(in Dublin) and the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen
(in Rotterdam
). The British Museum exhibition coincided with both the 80th anniversary of the publication of Joyce's novel, and Richard Hamilton's 80th birthday.
Hamilton's death was announced on 13 September 2011 by the Gagosian Gallery
without asking permission of the bereaved family, cynically exploiting the death of the artist for promotional purposes. Just the week prior to his death the artist, 89, was working to prepare a major museum retrospective of his oeuvre that had already been scheduled to travel to four cities in Europe and the U.S. in 2013-14.
and was awarded the Golden Lion
. Major retrospective exhibitions have been organized by the Tate Gallery
, London, 1970 and 1992, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
, New York, 1973, MACBA, Barcelona, Museum Ludwig
, Cologne, 2003, and the Neue Nationalgalerie
, Berlin, 1974. Some of the group exhibitions Hamilton participated in include: Documenta
4, Kassel, 1968; São Paulo Art Biennial
, 1989; Documenta
X, Kassel 1997; and Shanghai Biennale
, 2006. In 2010, the Serpentine Gallery
presented Hamilton’s ‘Modern Moral Matters’, an exhibition focusing on his political and protest works which were shown previously in 2008 at Inverleith House, Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh. Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane is currently showing a joint retrospective exhibition of both Hamilton's and Donagh's work called Civil Rights etc., which will be shown until January 2012.
Hamilton was an independent artist and was not represented by Gagosian Gallery
, as they claimed in their press release at the time of his death, with Alan Cristea Gallery, London, being the exclusive distributor of Hamilton's prints.
received a substantial gift of Hamilton's prints, making the museum the largest repository of the artist's prints in the world.
, 1993; the Arnold Bode Prize at Documenta
X, Kassel, 1997; and the Max Beckmann Prize for painting, 2006. He was made a Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour
(CH) by Queen Elizabeth II in 2000.
Order of the Companions of Honour
The Order of the Companions of Honour is an order of the Commonwealth realms. It was founded by King George V in June 1917, as a reward for outstanding achievements in the arts, literature, music, science, politics, industry or religion....
(24 February 1922 – 13 September 2011) was a British painter
Painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...
and collage
Collage
A collage is a work of formal art, primarily in the visual arts, made from an assemblage of different forms, thus creating a new whole....
artist. His 1956 collage
Collage
A collage is a work of formal art, primarily in the visual arts, made from an assemblage of different forms, thus creating a new whole....
, Just what is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing?
Just What Is It that Makes Today's Homes So Different, So Appealing?
Just what is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing? is a collage by English artist Richard Hamilton. It measures × . The work is now in the collection of the Kunsthalle Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany...
, produced for the This Is Tomorrow
This is Tomorrow
This Is Tomorrow was a seminal art exhibition in August 1956 at the Whitechapel Art Gallery, facilitated by curator Bryan Robertson. The core of the exhibition was the ICA Independent Group.-History:...
exhibition of the Independent Group
Independent Group
The Independent Group met at the Institute of Contemporary Arts London from 1952-55. The IG consisted of painters, sculptors, architects, writers and critics who wanted to challenge prevailing modernist approaches to culture. They introduced mass culture into debates about high culture,...
in London, is considered by critics and historians to be one of the early works of pop art
Pop art
Pop art is an art movement that emerged in the mid 1950s in Britain and in the late 1950s in the United States. Pop art challenged tradition by asserting that an artist's use of the mass-produced visual commodities of popular culture is contiguous with the perspective of fine art...
.
Early life
Hamilton was born in the PimlicoPimlico
Pimlico is a small area of central London in the City of Westminster. Like Belgravia, to which it was built as a southern extension, Pimlico is known for its grand garden squares and impressive Regency architecture....
, London. Despite having left school with no formal qualifications, he managed to gain employment as an apprentice working at an electrical components firm, where he discovered an ability for draughtsmanship
Drawing
Drawing is a form of visual art that makes use of any number of drawing instruments to mark a two-dimensional medium. Common instruments include graphite pencils, pen and ink, inked brushes, wax color pencils, crayons, charcoal, chalk, pastels, markers, styluses, and various metals .An artist who...
and began to do painting at evening classes at St Martin's School of Art. This led to his entry into the Royal Academy
Royal Academy
The Royal Academy of Arts is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly, London. The Royal Academy of Arts has a unique position in being an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects whose purpose is to promote the creation, enjoyment and...
Schools.
After spending the war
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
working as a technical draftsman, he re-enrolled at the Royal Academy Schools but was later expelled on grounds of "not profiting from the instruction", loss of his student status forcing Hamilton to carry out National Service
National service
National service is a common name for mandatory government service programmes . The term became common British usage during and for some years following the Second World War. Many young people spent one or more years in such programmes...
. After two years at the Slade School of Art, University College, London, Hamilton began exhibiting his work at the Institute of Contemporary Arts
Institute of Contemporary Arts
The Institute of Contemporary Arts is an artistic and cultural centre on The Mall in London, just off Trafalgar Square. It is located within Nash House, part of Carlton House Terrace, near the Duke of York Steps and Admiralty Arch...
(ICA) where he also produced posters and leaflets and teaching at the Central School of Art and Design.
1950s and 1960s
Hamilton's early work was much influenced by D'Arcy Wentworth ThompsonD'Arcy Wentworth Thompson
Sir D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson CB FRS FRSE was a Scottish biologist, mathematician, and classics scholar. A pioneering mathematical biologist, he is mainly remembered as the author of the 1917 book On Growth and Form, written largely in Dundee in 1915...
's 1913 text On Growth and Form. In 1952, at the first Independent Group
Independent Group
The Independent Group met at the Institute of Contemporary Arts London from 1952-55. The IG consisted of painters, sculptors, architects, writers and critics who wanted to challenge prevailing modernist approaches to culture. They introduced mass culture into debates about high culture,...
meeting, held at the ICA, Hamilton was introduced to Eduardo Paolozzi
Eduardo Paolozzi
Sir Eduardo Luigi Paolozzi, KBE, RA , was a Scottish sculptor and artist. He was a major figure in the international art sphere, while, working on his own interpretation and vision of the world. Paolozzi investigated how we can fit into the modern world to resemble our fragmented civilization...
's seminal presentation of collages produced in the late 1940s and early 1950s that are now considered to be the first standard bearers of Pop Art. Also in 1952, he was introduced to the Green Box notes of Marcel Duchamp
Marcel Duchamp
Marcel Duchamp was a French artist whose work is most often associated with the Dadaist and Surrealist movements. Considered by some to be one of the most important artists of the 20th century, Duchamp's output influenced the development of post-World War I Western art...
through Roland Penrose
Roland Penrose
Sir Roland Algernon Penrose CBE was an English artist, historian and poet. He was a major promoter and collector of modern art and an associate of the surrealists in the United Kingdom.- Biography :...
, whom Hamilton had met at the ICA. At the ICA Hamilton was responsible for the design and installation of a number of exhibitions including one on James Joyce
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...
and The Wonder and the Horror of the Human Head that was curated by Penrose. It was also through Penrose that Hamilton met Victor Pasmore
Victor Pasmore
Edwin John Victor Pasmore was a British artist and architect. He pioneered the development of abstract art in Britain in the 1940s and 1950s.-Biography:...
who gave him a teaching post based in Newcastle Upon Tyne
Newcastle upon Tyne
Newcastle upon Tyne is a city and metropolitan borough of Tyne and Wear, in North East England. Historically a part of Northumberland, it is situated on the north bank of the River Tyne...
which lasted until 1966. Among the students Hamilton tutored at Newcastle in this period were Rita Donagh
Rita Donagh
Rita Donagh is an artist known for her realistic paintings and painstaking draughtsmanship.Formerly, Rita Donagh taught at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne where she met Richard Hamilton, whom she later married. She also taught at the University of Reading, the Slade School of Art, and...
, Mark Lancaster
Mark Lancaster
John Mark Lancaster TD is a British Conservative Party politician. He was elected as Member of Parliament for the North East Milton Keynes constituency at the 2005 general election and held its successor seat, Milton Keynes North, at the 2010 general election...
, Tim Head
Tim Head
Tim Head is a British artist.Born in London, He studied at the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne from 1965 to 1969, where his teachers included Richard Hamilton and Ian Stephenson. His contemporary students included Roxy Music frontman Bryan Ferry...
, Roxy Music
Roxy Music
Roxy Music was a British art rock band formed in 1971 by Bryan Ferry, who became the group's lead vocalist and chief songwriter, and bassist Graham Simpson. The other members are Phil Manzanera , Andy Mackay and Paul Thompson . Former members include Brian Eno , and Eddie Jobson...
founder Bryan Ferry
Bryan Ferry
Bryan Ferry, CBE is an English singer, musician, and songwriter. Ferry came to public prominence in the early 1970s as lead vocalist and principal songwriter with the band Roxy Music, who enjoyed a highly successful career with three number one albums and ten singles entering the top ten charts in...
and Ferry's visual collaborator Nicholas De Ville. Hamilton's influence can be found in the visual styling and approach of Roxy Music.
Hamilton gave a 1959 lecture titled “Glorious Technicolor, Breathtaking Cinemascope and Stereophonic Sound,” a phrase taken from a Cole Porter
Cole Porter
Cole Albert Porter was an American composer and songwriter. Born to a wealthy family in Indiana, he defied the wishes of his domineering grandfather and took up music as a profession. Classically trained, he was drawn towards musical theatre...
lyric in the 1957 musical “Silk Stockings.” In that lecture, which sported a pop soundtrack and the demonstration of an early Polaroid
Instant camera
The instant camera is a type of camera that generates a developed film image. The most popular types to use self-developing film were formerly made by Polaroid Corporation....
camera, Hamilton deconstructed the technology of cinema to explain how it helped to create Hollywood’s allure. He further developed that theme in the early 1960s with a series of paintings inspired by film stills and publicity shots.
The post at the ICA also afforded Hamilton the time to further his research on Duchamp, which resulted in the 1960 publication of a typographic version of Duchamp's Green Box, which comprised Duchamp's original notes for the design and construction of his famous work The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even, also known as The Large Glass. Hamilton's 1955 exhibition of paintings at the Hanover Gallery were all in some form a homage to Duchamp. In the same year Hamilton organised the exhibition Man Machine Motion at the Hatton Gallery
Hatton Gallery
The Hatton Gallery is Newcastle University's art gallery in Newcastle upon Tyne, England, and is a part of the Great North Museum. It is based in the University's Fine Art Building.- History :...
in Newcastle. Designed to look more like an advertising display than a conventional art exhibition the show prefigured Hamilton's contribution to the This Is Tomorrow
This is Tomorrow
This Is Tomorrow was a seminal art exhibition in August 1956 at the Whitechapel Art Gallery, facilitated by curator Bryan Robertson. The core of the exhibition was the ICA Independent Group.-History:...
exhibition in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, at the Whitechapel Gallery
Whitechapel Gallery
The Whitechapel Gallery is a public art gallery on the north side of Whitechapel High Street, in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. Designed by Charles Harrison Townsend, it was founded in 1901 as one of the first publicly-funded galleries for temporary exhibitions in London, and it has a long...
the following year. Just what is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing? was created in 1956 for the catalogue of This Is Tomorrow
This is Tomorrow
This Is Tomorrow was a seminal art exhibition in August 1956 at the Whitechapel Art Gallery, facilitated by curator Bryan Robertson. The core of the exhibition was the ICA Independent Group.-History:...
where it was reproduced in black and white and also used in posters for the exhibit. The collage depicts a muscle-man provocatively holding a Tootsie Pop and a woman with large, bare breasts wearing a lampshade hat, surrounded by emblems of 1950s affluence from a vacuum cleaner to a large canned ham. Just what is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing? is widely acknowledged as one of the first pieces of Pop Art
Pop art
Pop art is an art movement that emerged in the mid 1950s in Britain and in the late 1950s in the United States. Pop art challenged tradition by asserting that an artist's use of the mass-produced visual commodities of popular culture is contiguous with the perspective of fine art...
and his written definition of what ‘pop' is laid the ground for the whole international movement. Hamilton's definition of Pop Art from a letter to Alison and Peter Smithson
Alison and Peter Smithson
English architects Alison Smithson and Peter Smithson together formed an architectural partnership, and are often associated with the New Brutalism .Peter was born in Stockton-on-Tees in north-east England, and Alison was born in Sheffield, South Yorkshire...
dated 16 January 1957 was - "Pop Art is: popular, transient, expendable, low-cost, mass-produced, young, witty, sexy, gimmicky, glamorous, and Big Business" - stressing its everyday, commonplace values. He thus created collages incorporating advertisements from mass-circulation newspapers and magazines.
The success of This Is Tomorrow
This is Tomorrow
This Is Tomorrow was a seminal art exhibition in August 1956 at the Whitechapel Art Gallery, facilitated by curator Bryan Robertson. The core of the exhibition was the ICA Independent Group.-History:...
secured Hamilton further teaching assignments in particular at the Royal College of Art
Royal College of Art
The Royal College of Art is an art school located in London, United Kingdom. It is the world’s only wholly postgraduate university of art and design, offering the degrees of Master of Arts , Master of Philosophy and Doctor of Philosophy...
from 1957-61 where he promoted David Hockney
David Hockney
David Hockney, CH, RA, is an English painter, draughtsman, printmaker, stage designer and photographer, who is based in Bridlington, Yorkshire and Kensington, London....
and Peter Blake
Peter Blake (artist)
Sir Peter Thomas Blake, KBE, CBE, RDI, RA is an English pop artist, best known for his design of the sleeve for the Beatles' album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. He lives in Chiswick, London, UK.-Career:...
. During this period Hamilton was also very active in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament is an anti-nuclear organisation that advocates unilateral nuclear disarmament by the United Kingdom, international nuclear disarmament and tighter international arms regulation through agreements such as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty...
and produced a work parodying the then leader of the Labour Party Hugh Gaitskell
Hugh Gaitskell
Hugh Todd Naylor Gaitskell CBE was a British Labour politician, who held Cabinet office in Clement Attlee's governments, and was the Leader of the Labour Party and Leader of the Opposition from 1955, until his death in 1963.-Early life:He was born in Kensington, London, the third and youngest...
for rejecting a policy of unilateral nuclear disarmament. In the early 1960s he received a grant from the Arts Council
Arts council
An arts council is a government or private, non-profit organization dedicated to promoting the arts mainly by funding local artists, awarding prizes, and organizing events at home and abroad...
to investigate the condition of the Kurt Schwitters
Kurt Schwitters
Kurt Hermann Eduard Karl Julius Schwitters was a German painter who was born in Hanover, Germany. Schwitters worked in several genres and media, including Dada, Constructivism, Surrealism, poetry, sound, painting, sculpture, graphic design, typography and what came to be known as...
'Merzbau' in Cumbria
Cumbria
Cumbria , is a non-metropolitan county in North West England. The county and Cumbria County Council, its local authority, came into existence in 1974 after the passage of the Local Government Act 1972. Cumbria's largest settlement and county town is Carlisle. It consists of six districts, and in...
. The research eventually resulted in Hamilton organising the preservation of the work by relocating it to the Hatton Gallery in the Newcastle University.
In 1962 his first wife Terry was killed in a car crash and in part to recover from this he travelled for the first time to the United States in 1963 for a retrospective of the works of Marcel Duchamp at the Pasadena Art Museum, where, as well as meeting other leading pop artists, he was befriended by Duchamp. Arising from this Hamilton curated the first and to date only British retrospective of Duchamp's work, and his familiarity with The Green Box enabled Hamilton to make copies of The Large Glass and other glass works too fragile to travel. The exhibition was shown at the Tate Gallery
Tate Gallery
The Tate is an institution that houses the United Kingdom's national collection of British Art, and International Modern and Contemporary Art...
in 1966.
From the mid-1960s, Hamilton was represented by Robert Fraser and even produced a series of prints Swingeing London based on Fraser's arrest, along with Mick Jagger
Mick Jagger
Sir Michael Philip "Mick" Jagger is an English musician, singer and songwriter, best known as the lead vocalist and a founding member of The Rolling Stones....
, for possession of drugs
Recreational drug use
Recreational drug use is the use of a drug, usually psychoactive, with the intention of creating or enhancing recreational experience. Such use is controversial, however, often being considered to be also drug abuse, and it is often illegal...
. This association with the 1960s pop music scene continued as Hamilton became friends with Paul McCartney
Paul McCartney
Sir James Paul McCartney, MBE, Hon RAM, FRCM is an English musician, singer-songwriter and composer. Formerly of The Beatles and Wings , McCartney is listed in Guinness World Records as the "most successful musician and composer in popular music history", with 60 gold discs and sales of 100...
resulting in him producing the cover design and poster collage for the Beatles' White Album
The Beatles (album)
The Beatles is the ninth official album by the English rock group The Beatles, a double album released in 1968. It is also commonly known as "The White Album" as it has no graphics or text other than the band's name embossed on its plain white sleeve.The album was written and recorded during a...
.
1970s to 2011
During the 1970s, Richard Hamilton enjoyed international acclaim with a number of major exhibitions being organised of his work. Hamilton had found a new companion in painter Rita DonaghRita Donagh
Rita Donagh is an artist known for her realistic paintings and painstaking draughtsmanship.Formerly, Rita Donagh taught at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne where she met Richard Hamilton, whom she later married. She also taught at the University of Reading, the Slade School of Art, and...
. Together they set about converting North End, a farm in the Oxfordshire
Oxfordshire
Oxfordshire is a county in the South East region of England, bordering on Warwickshire and Northamptonshire , Buckinghamshire , Berkshire , Wiltshire and Gloucestershire ....
countryside, into a home and studios. "By 1970, always fascinated by new technology, Hamilton was redirecting advances in product design into fine art, with the backing of xartcollection, Zurich, a young company that pioneered the production of multiples with the aim of bringing art to a wider audience." Hamilton realised a series of projects that blurred the boundaries between artwork and product design including a painting that incorporated a state-of-the-art radio receiver and the casing of a Diab Computer. During the 1980s Hamilton again voyaged into industrial design
Industrial design
Industrial design is the use of a combination of applied art and applied science to improve the aesthetics, ergonomics, and usability of a product, but it may also be used to improve the product's marketability and production...
and designed two computer
Computer
A computer is a programmable machine designed to sequentially and automatically carry out a sequence of arithmetic or logical operations. The particular sequence of operations can be changed readily, allowing the computer to solve more than one kind of problem...
exteriors: OHIO computer prototype (for a Swedish firm named Isotron, 1984) and DIAB DS-101 (for Dataindustrier AB
Dataindustrier AB
Dataindustrier AB or DIAB was a Swedish computer engineering and manufacturing firm, founded in 1970 by Lars Karlsson and active in the 1970s through 1990s. The company's first product was a board-based computer centered around a specific bus named Data Board 4680. This unit was used for automatic...
, 1986). As part of a television project Hamilton was introduced to the Quantel Paintbox
Quantel Paintbox
The Quantel Paintbox was a dedicated computer graphics workstation for composition of broadcast television video and graphics. Its design emphasizes the studio workflow efficiency required for live news production...
and has since used this or similar devices to produce and modify his work.
From the late 1970s Hamilton’s activity was concentrated largely on investigations of printmaking processes, often in unusual and complex combinations. In 1977-8 Hamilton undertook a series of collaborations with the artist Dieter Roth
Dieter Roth
Dieter Roth was an Icelandic artist of Swiss German origin best known for his artist's books and for his sculptures and pictures made with rotting food stuffs. He was also known as Dieter Rot and Diter Rot....
that also blurred the definitions of the artist as sole author of their work.
In 1981 Hamilton began work on a trilogy of paintings based on the conflicts in Northern Ireland after watching a television documentary about the protest organised by IRA
Ira
IRA most commonly refers to:*Irish Republican Army, which has existed in various forms since 1916**List of organisations known as the Irish Republican Army**Provisional Irish Republican Army...
prisoners in Long Kesh Prison, unofficially known as The Maze. The citizen (1981-83) shows IRA prisoner Bobby Sands
Bobby Sands
Robert Gerard "Bobby" Sands was an Irish volunteer of the Provisional Irish Republican Army and member of the United Kingdom Parliament who died on hunger strike while imprisoned in HM Prison Maze....
portrayed as Jesus, with long flowing hair and a beard. Republican prisoners had refused to wear prison uniforms, claiming that they were political prisoners. Prison officers refused to let "the blanket protesters" use the toilets unless they wore prison uniforms. The republican prisoners refused, and instead smeared the excrement on the wall of their cells. Hamilton explained (in the catalogue to his Tate Gallery
Tate Gallery
The Tate is an institution that houses the United Kingdom's national collection of British Art, and International Modern and Contemporary Art...
exhibition, 1992), that he saw the image of "the blanket man as a public relations contrivance of enormous efficacy. It had the moral conviction of a religious icon and the persuasiveness of the advertising man's dream soap commercial - yet it was a present reality". The subject (1988-89) shows an Orangeman, a member of an order dedicated to preserve Unionism in Northern Ireland. The state (1993) shows a British soldier undertaking solitary patrol on a street. The citizen was shown as part of "A Cellular Maze", a 1983 joint exhibition with Donagh.
Since the late 1940s Richard Hamilton has been engaged with a project to produce a suite of illustrations for James Joyce's Ulysses
Ulysses (novel)
Ulysses is a novel by the Irish author James Joyce. It was first serialised in parts in the American journal The Little Review from March 1918 to December 1920, and then published in its entirety by Sylvia Beach on 2 February 1922, in Paris. One of the most important works of Modernist literature,...
. In 2002, the British Museum
British Museum
The British Museum is a museum of human history and culture in London. Its collections, which number more than seven million objects, are amongst the largest and most comprehensive in the world and originate from all continents, illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from its...
staged an exhibition of Hamilton's illustrations of James Joyce
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...
's Ulysses
Ulysses (novel)
Ulysses is a novel by the Irish author James Joyce. It was first serialised in parts in the American journal The Little Review from March 1918 to December 1920, and then published in its entirety by Sylvia Beach on 2 February 1922, in Paris. One of the most important works of Modernist literature,...
, entitled Imaging Ulysses. A book of Hamilton's illustrations was published simultaneously, with text by Stephen Coppel. In the book, Hamilton explained that the idea of illustrating this complex, experimental novel occurred to him when he was doing his National Service
National service
National service is a common name for mandatory government service programmes . The term became common British usage during and for some years following the Second World War. Many young people spent one or more years in such programmes...
in 1947. His first preliminary sketches were made while at the Slade School of Art, and he continued to refine and re-work the images over the next 50 years. Hamilton felt his re-working of the illustrations in many different media had produced a visual effect analogous to Joyce's verbal techniques. The Ulysses illustrations were subsequently exhibited at the Irish Museum of Modern Art
Irish Museum of Modern Art
The Irish Museum of Modern Art also known as IMMA, is Ireland's leading national institution exhibiting and collecting modern and contemporary art. The museum opened in May 1991 and is located in Royal Hospital Kilmainham, a 17th-century building near Heuston Station to the west of Dublin's city...
(in Dublin) and the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen
Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen
The Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen is the main art museum in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. The museum began in 1847 with the collection of Frans Jacob Otto Boijmans . Much of the museum's original collection was destroyed in a disastrous 1864 fire...
(in Rotterdam
Rotterdam
Rotterdam is the second-largest city in the Netherlands and one of the largest ports in the world. Starting as a dam on the Rotte river, Rotterdam has grown into a major international commercial centre...
). The British Museum exhibition coincided with both the 80th anniversary of the publication of Joyce's novel, and Richard Hamilton's 80th birthday.
Hamilton's death was announced on 13 September 2011 by the Gagosian Gallery
Gagosian Gallery
Gagosian Gallery is a contemporary art gallery owned and directed by Larry Gagosian. There are currently eleven gallery spaces: three in New York; two in London; one in each of Beverly Hills, Rome, Athens, Paris, Geneva, Hong Kong and Moscow.-1980s:...
without asking permission of the bereaved family, cynically exploiting the death of the artist for promotional purposes. Just the week prior to his death the artist, 89, was working to prepare a major museum retrospective of his oeuvre that had already been scheduled to travel to four cities in Europe and the U.S. in 2013-14.
Exhibitions
The first exhibition of Hamilton's paintings was shown at the Hanover Gallery, London, in 1955. In 1993 Hamilton represented Great Britain at the Venice BiennaleVenice Biennale
The Venice Biennale is a major contemporary art exhibition that takes place once every two years in Venice, Italy. The Venice Film Festival is part of it. So too is the Venice Biennale of Architecture, which is held in even years...
and was awarded the Golden Lion
Golden Lion
Il Leone d’Oro is the highest prize given to a film at the Venice Film Festival. The prize was introduced in 1949 by the organizing committee and is now regarded as one of the film industry's most distinguished prizes...
. Major retrospective exhibitions have been organized by the Tate Gallery
Tate Gallery
The Tate is an institution that houses the United Kingdom's national collection of British Art, and International Modern and Contemporary Art...
, London, 1970 and 1992, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum is a well-known museum located on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City, United States. It is the permanent home to a renowned collection of Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, early Modern, and contemporary art and also features special exhibitions...
, New York, 1973, MACBA, Barcelona, Museum Ludwig
Museum Ludwig
Museum Ludwig, located in Cologne, Germany, houses a collection of modern art. It includes works from PopArt, Abstract and Surrealism, and has one of the largest Picasso collections in Europe. It also features many works by Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein....
, Cologne, 2003, and the Neue Nationalgalerie
Neue Nationalgalerie
Neue Nationalgalerie at the Kulturforum is a museum for modern art in Berlin, with its main focus on the early 20th century. It is part of the Nationalgalerie of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin...
, Berlin, 1974. Some of the group exhibitions Hamilton participated in include: Documenta
Documenta
documenta is an exhibition of modern and contemporary art which takes place every five years in Kassel, Germany. It was founded by artist, teacher and curator Arnold Bode in 1955 as part of the Bundesgartenschau which took place in Kassel at that time...
4, Kassel, 1968; São Paulo Art Biennial
São Paulo Art Biennial
The São Paulo Art Biennial was founded in 1951 and has been held every two years since. It is the second oldest art biennial in the world after the Venice Biennial , which serves as its role model....
, 1989; Documenta
Documenta
documenta is an exhibition of modern and contemporary art which takes place every five years in Kassel, Germany. It was founded by artist, teacher and curator Arnold Bode in 1955 as part of the Bundesgartenschau which took place in Kassel at that time...
X, Kassel 1997; and Shanghai Biennale
Shanghai Biennale
The Shanghai Biennale is the highest-profile contemporary art event in the city and the most established art biennale in China.Aside from its main museum show, it also includes talks, lectures and installations in various venues throughout the city....
, 2006. In 2010, the Serpentine Gallery
Serpentine Gallery
The Serpentine Gallery is an art gallery in Kensington Gardens, Hyde Park, central London. It focuses on modern and contemporary art. The exhibitions, architecture, education and public programmes attract approximately 750,000 visitors a year...
presented Hamilton’s ‘Modern Moral Matters’, an exhibition focusing on his political and protest works which were shown previously in 2008 at Inverleith House, Royal Botanic Garden in Edinburgh. Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane is currently showing a joint retrospective exhibition of both Hamilton's and Donagh's work called Civil Rights etc., which will be shown until January 2012.
Hamilton was an independent artist and was not represented by Gagosian Gallery
Gagosian Gallery
Gagosian Gallery is a contemporary art gallery owned and directed by Larry Gagosian. There are currently eleven gallery spaces: three in New York; two in London; one in each of Beverly Hills, Rome, Athens, Paris, Geneva, Hong Kong and Moscow.-1980s:...
, as they claimed in their press release at the time of his death, with Alan Cristea Gallery, London, being the exclusive distributor of Hamilton's prints.
Collections
The Tate Gallery now has a comprehensive collection of Hamilton's work from across his career. In 1996, the Kunstmuseum WinterthurKunstmuseum Winterthur
Kunstmuseum Winterthur is an art museum in Winterthur, Switzerland run up today by the local Kunstverein, founded in CHK...
received a substantial gift of Hamilton's prints, making the museum the largest repository of the artist's prints in the world.
Recognition
Hamilton was awarded the William and Noma Copley Foundation Award, 1960; the John Moores Contemporary Painting Prize, 1960; the Talens Prize International, 1970; the Leone d’Oro for his exhibition in the British Pavilion at the Venice BiennaleVenice Biennale
The Venice Biennale is a major contemporary art exhibition that takes place once every two years in Venice, Italy. The Venice Film Festival is part of it. So too is the Venice Biennale of Architecture, which is held in even years...
, 1993; the Arnold Bode Prize at Documenta
Documenta
documenta is an exhibition of modern and contemporary art which takes place every five years in Kassel, Germany. It was founded by artist, teacher and curator Arnold Bode in 1955 as part of the Bundesgartenschau which took place in Kassel at that time...
X, Kassel, 1997; and the Max Beckmann Prize for painting, 2006. He was made a Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour
Order of the Companions of Honour
The Order of the Companions of Honour is an order of the Commonwealth realms. It was founded by King George V in June 1917, as a reward for outstanding achievements in the arts, literature, music, science, politics, industry or religion....
(CH) by Queen Elizabeth II in 2000.
External links
- The Guardian: Obituary, Richard Hamilton, the original pop artist dies at 89
- Footage of Richard Hamilton who was interviewed on his 2001 Polaroid exhibition in Birmingham, UK
- Richard Hamilton: Pop Daddy, from an interview by Hans-Ulrich Obrist, Tate Magazine
- Hal Foster, On the First Pop Age, New Left Review
- Richard Hamilton, Catalogue
- exhibitions with Richard Hamilton
- Hamilton New York 2006
- Richard Hamilton works in the Tate Collection
- Richard Hamilton's illustrations of Ulysses