Modern World: The Art of Richard Hamilton

Richard Hamilton was the most influential British artist of his generation. Often described as 'the father of Pop art', he produced experimental and multilayered work in a range of media that both explored and crystallized the postwar world of consumer capitalism and popular culture in an attempt to 'get all of living' into his art. Seminal works such as his collage Just what is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing? from 1956 and his silkscreen and related series based on a news photograph of Mick Jagger Swingeing London 67 came to define an era in which new commodities and technologies, mass production, mass media, and celebrity came to the fore, and challenged the hierarchical values of 'high' and 'low' art. Later works tackling subjects such as the Troubles in Northern Ireland and the Gulf War contained a serious political message, as he continued to be 'passionately responsive to his own time', as one critic put it. His groundbreaking exhibitions and installations, first as a leading member of the Independent Group in the 1950s, and later at venues such as the Venice Biennale, influenced curatorial practice in the latter twentieth century and into the next. His importance to fields beyond contemporary art was demonstrated when he was asked to design the cover of the Beatles' so-called White Album in 1968. In this book, acclaimed cultural commentator and writer Michael Bracewell presents a concise introduction to this deeply complex artist. Written from a personal perspective, it discusses Hamilton's all-embracing work in relation to the music, film, and popular culture of the day in a rich new interpretation of his art and ideas. The book covers the full scope of Hamilton's practice, and includes examples from the various media in which he worked, from collage, print and painting to sculpture and photography, as well as the many diverse subjects of the modern world that he addressed. With photographs and quotes from Hamilton throughout, this attractive volume will appeal to anyone wanting to understand his iconic and pioneering work and its lasting cultural legacy.

Table of Contents:
1. Cool: Great art; cool; My Marilyn; odd pop; Pop; Tom Wolfe; ballrooms versus the ICA • 2. Context: Naturalism; ‘multi-allusive’; British Beat; the Pop age; modernism; postmodernism; ‘the manner of apprehending’; poetic impulse; beauty; brief historical overview; 1986 as the end of the Pop age • 3. Epiphany: Intimacy regulators; Lux; The Large Glass I; imaging James Joyce’s Ulysses • 4. Revolution: Pop age; Swinging London ’67; Unorthodox Rendition; Kent State; the summer of ’68; The Beatles; the whiteness of the White Album; Chicago project; Revolution 1; ‘commodified dissent’ • 5. Women: Marcel Duchamp vs. Goethe; thirtysomething; re Nude; truth and beauty; Fashion-plate (cosmetic studies); Baudelaire; ‘the Scatological Period’; Romantic irony; A Host of Angels; Untitled; question answered • Illustration credits • Acknowledgments • Index

About the Author :
Michael Bracewell is a British writer, critic and novelist. He writes widely on modern and contemporary art and is a contributor to frieze, The Burlington and Parkett magazines. His recent publications include Richard Hamilton: Late Works (2012); Lucy McKenzie (2013); Damien Hirst: The Complete Psalm Paintings (2014); Kai Althoff (2015); Richard Avedon and Andy Warhol (2016); and What is Gilbert and George? (2017). His selected writings on art, The Space Between, were published in 2012.