Richard Hamilton: Sexy, Gimmicky, Glamorous, Big Business

Richard Hamilton, Hommage à Chrysler Corp.  1957

This is one of a number of paintings by Hamilton that explore the relationship between women and cars, an association that has become an advertising cliché. He has removed and abstracted details so that the remaining areas appear as disconnected shapes and marks. A woman can be seen at the centre, leaning over a gleaming car. She is identifiable by her red lips and the shapes forming her breasts. These elements were derived from, or inspired by, adverts and popular imagery. Hamilton described the painting as a ‘compilation of themes derived from the glossies ... an anthology of presentation techniques’.

Gallery label, July 2017

Richard Hamilton, My Marilyn  1965

My Marilyn is a print derived from photographs of the screen actress Marilyn Monroe (1926–62) that the artist saw in Town magazine, in November 1962, not long after her death that August. Photographs taken by George Barris covered a double-page spread. Hamilton recounted:

Richard Hamilton, Fashion-plate  1969–70

Fashion-plate is a print related to the series Cosmetic Studies in which Hamilton put together fragments of photographs of models from fashion magazines. They demonstrated Hamilton’s fondness for re-using and re-defining recognisable images in a new context. Here, he used photographs of actress Sophia Loren taken from a magazine. In collaboration with photographer Tony Evans, Hamilton then shot photographic studio equipment. These frame the portrait and also emphasise the fashion and pop art imagery. Hamilton then built up collage elements and stencilling (pochoir) using actual cosmetics.

Gallery label, July 2017

Richard Hamilton, Toaster  1967

This stylised, two-dimensional print is based on promotional material produced by the domestic appliance company, Braun. The text was compiled by Hamilton from Braun advertisements. Toaster reflects Hamilton's interest in consumer culture and modern design. He wrote of Braun's chief designer: 'My admiration for the work of Dieter Rams is intense and I have for years been uniquely attracted towards his design sensibility; so much so that his consumer products have come to occupy a place in my heart and consciousness that the Mont Sainte-Victoire did in Cézanne's.'

Gallery label, August 2004

Richard Hamilton, Release  1972

The print Release derives its title from the name of an organisation set up to provide legal aid and social support to people who have fallen foul of the law, often as a result of drug abuse. In 1972, Diana Melly (married to the jazz musician, writer and critic George Melly and working for Release) asked Hamilton if he would make a print to help raise funds for the organisation which was in financial difficulties. The artists Jim Dine (born 1935) and David Hockney (born 1937) also contributed, deciding to divide the profits between Release and the National Council for Civil Liberties. Because of the focus of Release on those suffering from drug abuse, Hamilton decided to use one of the images he had created in his Swingeing London group of works. These were generated by the arrest and imprisonment of Hamilton’s art dealer Robert Fraser (1937-86) in 1967 for the possession of heroin. The artist had created a poster from a collage of press cuttings from the event entitled Swingeing London 67 – poster, 1967-8 (P01855), before embarking on a group of seven paintings entitled Swingeing London 67 1968 (private collection) and Swingeing London 67 (a) – (f), 1968-9 (Swingeing London 67 (f) is T01144).

Richard Hamilton, $he  1958–61

$he explores the imagery of consumerism and female identity, bringing together advertisements for household appliances alongside fragmentary images of a model taken from Esquire magazine. ‘Sex is everywhere, symbolised in the glamour of mass-produced luxury – the interplay of fleshy plastic and smooth, fleshier metal’, Hamilton wrote. ‘This relationship of woman and appliance is a fundamental theme of our culture; as obsessive and archetypal as the Western movie gun duel.’ The mechanisation of desire is alsoa key concern of the Large Glass, whose notes Hamilton was translating at this time.

Gallery label, August 2011

Richard Hamilton, ‘AAH!’ in Perspective  1963, remade 1973

Richard Hamilton, Interior  1964–5

Hamilton claimed that any interior is 'a set of anachronisms, a museum, with the lingering residues of decorative styles that an inhabited space collects.' In this print, he contrasts an elaborately decorated interior with uncluttered coloured planes reminiscent of modernist architecture and design. The clash of styles is also reflected in his combination of painting with silkscreen printing, a technique associated with commercial art that allowed the direct transfer of photographic images onto canvas.

Gallery label, September 2004

Richard Hamilton, Swingeing London III  1972

Swingeing London III was generated by the process of creating the screenprint Release, 1972 (P04254). As the Release – Stage Proofs (P02416-32; the series is incomplete) show, Hamilton made Release by printing successive layers of colour through the use of seventeen hand-cut screens with a final addition of the black photographic screen giving photographic definition to the image. While he was building up the layers of colour on Release, the artist noticed that the composition worked well in its unfinished state, without the final black screen. He decided to create a poster version of the image by overprinting some of the surplus proofs. To make Swingeing London III the artist created a further seven screens for the application of seven additional layers of colour, enhancing the vividness of the tones visible on Stage Proofs 16 and 17. The resulting image, made up of areas of vivid flat colour, is an icon of Pop representation.

Richard Hamilton, Interior II  1964

Like Hamilton’s later prints, A dedicated follower of fashion, 1980 (Tate P07448) and The marriage, 1998 (P78290), the painting Interior II was developed from a discarded photograph the artist discovered by chance. Hamilton was teaching art at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne when he found a still from the film Shockproof (1949, director Douglas Sirk, screenplay by Samuel Fuller) lying on a classroom floor. The 1948 photograph became the generator for a series of works playing on the representation of an interior space. Hamilton was struck by the carefully arranged composition of the still, photographed in a specially constructed set. He explained:

Richard Hamilton, Swingeing London 67 - poster  1967–8

Hamilton created Swingeing London 67 – poster in response to a commission by Edition ED912 in Milan, a distributor of art posters. The poster is one of a group of paintings and prints Hamilton made after his art dealer Robert Fraser (1937-86) was arrested and imprisoned for the possession of heroin. On 12 February 1967 the police raided a party at the Sussex farmhouse of Keith Richards, one of the members of the rock group, the Rolling Stones, where they found evidence of the consumption of various drugs. On 27 June 1967, Fraser and Mick Jagger (the band’s lead singer) were found guilty of the possession of illegal drugs. The following day the two men were handcuffed to each other and driven to court in a police van, where they were sentenced to six months and three months respectively. After the defence lawyer’s appeal, Jagger’s sentence was reduced to a fine but Fraser’s appeal was rejected and he spent four months behind bars in Wormwood Scrubs. Hamilton was outraged by the sequence of events and wrote:

Richard Hamilton, Adonis in Y fronts  1963

The print Adonis in Y fronts is a based on a painting of the same title that is one of a group of four works made in 1962-3 under the umbrella title Towards a definitive statement on the coming trends in men’s wear and accessories. The Adonis in Y-fronts painting, made in 1962 (Art Institute of Chicago), is the third in the series. The print is distinguished from the painting by the removal of the hyphen in its title. Hamilton derived the group title for these works from a headline of a men’s fashion article he found in Playboy magazine. He added the word ‘towards’ to make it sound less ‘definitive’, explaining: ‘fashion depends on an occasion, season, time of day and, most importantly, the area of activity in which the wearer is involved. A definitive statement seemed hardly possible without some preliminary investigation into specific concepts of masculinity.’ (Quoted in Richard Hamilton, p.154.)

Richard Hamilton, Swingeing London 67 (f)  1968–9

This work is based on a photograph, taken from a newspaper, showing Mick Jagger handcuffed to the art dealer Robert Fraser following their appearance in court on drugs charges. Both were convicted. The title plays on the term ‘Swinging London’ and the judge’s insistence on imposing a swingeing penalty. For many, this occasion typified the moral backlash against the liberalisation of the 1960s. Hamilton is widely regarded as a founder of pop art. He incorporated images from film posters, magazines and art history in his art and was interested in architecture and design, as well as broader political subjects.

Gallery label, September 2018