Wednesday 12 February 2014

Richard Hamilton - Tate Modern and ICA

Richard Hamilton, Swingeing London, 1967
Richard Hamilton is at Tate Modern until 26 May 2014 and at the ICA until 6 April 2014.
Richard Hamilton is routinely labelled as the 'Father of British Pop Art', principally because of his wonderful, prescient 1956 collage Just what is it about today's homes that makes them so different, so appealing? (see below) and his early (1957) definition of Pop: Pop Art is: Popular (designed for a mass audience),Transient (short-term solution), Expendable (easily forgotten), Low cost, Mass produced, Young (aimed at youth), Witty, Sexy, Gimmicky, Glamorous, Big business. However, despite this, and a handful of other seminal works classified as 'British Pop', his wide ranging interests and restless experimentation meant that his work largely escapes such a narrow classification.
The exhibition at Tate Modern presents a huge range of his work from student etchings made in 1949 through to the work he was making at the time of his death in 2011, and includes a reconstruction of his 1956 installation Fun House and his replica of Marcel Duchamp's 'Large Glass'.
Complementing the Tate’s show the ICA is also showing reconstructions of two installations, Man, Machine and Motion (1955) and An Exhibit (1957).
Read reviews by Adrian Searle, Richard Cork, Laura Cumming, Jackie Wullschlager, Brian Sewell and Mark Hudson and an article by Fiona MacCarthy.
Richard Hamilton, Man, Machine and Motion, 1955 (reconstructed for ICA 2014)
Richard Hamilton, Just what is it about today's homes that makes them so different, so appealing?, 1956
Richard Hamilton, Interior II, 1964
Richard Hamilton, Portrait of Hugh Gaitskell as a Famous Monster of Filmland, 1964
Marcel Duchamp / Richard Hamilton, The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass), 1915-23; replica 1965-6
Richard Hamilton, The Citizen, 1981-3
Richard Hamilton, Self-Portrait 05.3.81, 1990

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