Collected Words

"Richard Hamilton is a key artist who, though well-known in the UK and Europe, is not very familiar in the US. I chose Collected Words because it is the best analysis of his work that we have. He was always the most astute critic of his art. Just as important is his analysis of new forms of popular culture and mass media as they emerged. The book, which spans 30 years of his writing, serves as a compressed history of these new technologies. In addition, Hamilton was one of the inventors of pop prose. He developed a new language that mimicked – both ironically and reverentially – the idioms of the ad-men of the time. It is full of the lingo of the moment, re-functioned to critical ends with jazzy terms and speedy phrases pushed to a parodic extreme. Well, his definition of pop is a good example. It appears in a letter to the architects Peter and Alison Smithson which Hamilton wrote in 1957. 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; and Big Business” There are so many slogans here that became crucial to pop, and the list comes before the art even existed as such. That is the kind of acumen Hamilton had. He was so important to pop, but he was equally important to many other crucial moments in 20th century art. He was involved in the art-design interface early on. He was also an innovator in exhibitions – the arrangement of work was absolutely transformed by Hamilton. He had a consistent fascination with new technologies. He actually constructed his own stereo and his own computer, and he was one of the first artists to employ computer programmes in painting. Hamilton was also essential to the reception of Marcel Duchamp. He worked on the translation of the notes that Duchamp made for his most important work, The Large Glass . He also reconstructed The Large Glass and did other works after Duchamp. So Hamilton had a manifold career. To talk to him was to be in communication with some of the most important ideas in 20th century art."