Essays and articles about Richard Hamiton, "the intellectual father of
Pop art."
Still little-known in the United States, Richard Hamilton is a key
figure in twentieth-century art. An original member of the legendary
Independent Group in London in the 1950s, Hamilton organized or
participated in groundbreaking exhibitions associated with the group--in
particular This Is Tomorrow (1956), for which his celebrated collage
Just what is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing?,
crystallizing the postwar world of consumer capitalism, was made. With
his colleagues in the Independent Group, Hamilton promoted the artistic
investigation of popular culture, undertaking this analysis in
paintings, prints, and texts, thus setting the stage for Pop
art--indeed, he is often called the intellectual father of Pop. At the
same time, Hamilton was crucial to the postwar reception of Marcel
Duchamp, transcribing his notes for The Large Glass and producing a
reconstruction of this epochal piece for the first Duchamp retrospective
in Britain, in 1966. Over the years Hamilton has continued to develop
his work, in a variety of media, on subjects ranging from the Rolling
Stones to the Troubles in Northern Ireland, from new commodities and
technologies to the oldest genres in Western painting. True to the
mission of the October Files series, this volume collects the most
telling essays on Hamilton (including several hard-to-find texts by the
artist), spanning the entire range of his extraordinary career.
