WHEN : 16th Aug, 6:00pm
WHERE : Institute of Modern Art
Richard Hamilton, the godfather of pop art, died in September last year. Over fifty-plus years, he created a huge body of work drawing on pop-culture imagery. He is famous for his iconic collage Just What Is It that Makes Today’s Homes so Different, so Appealing? (made for the 1956 Independent Group show This is Tomorrow, at the ICA in London) and for his blank-sleeve design for The Beatles’ 1968 double album (consequently known as The White Album). Hamilton defined pop art as ‘popular, transient, expendable, low-cost, mass-produced, young, witty, sexy, gimmicky, glamorous, and Big Business’. However, he was also an intellectual, being responsible for introducing Marcel Duchamp’s proto-conceptualist work to Britain. In 1969, James Scott made documentary on Hamilton. It proved to be a collaboration, ‘as much by him as about him’, Scott said. Images of Hamilton’s works were intercut with newsreel images, movie trailers, and much else, as the artist offered a pithy voiceover commentary. The film was included in Hamilton’s 1970 Tate Gallery retrospective. The twenty-five minute study remains vivid and surprising today.
Image and Text : IMA, 2012
