The Independent Group~ Postwar, Britain and the Aesthetics of Plenty ·1, Edited by David Robbuis Exhibition Organized by Introduction by Essays by Hood Museum ofArt, Dartmouth College .Jacquelynn Baas Lawrence Alloway In'Stitute ofContemporary Arts, London TheoCrosby The Museum ofContemporary Art, Los Angeles Chronology by BarrY, Curtis University Art Museum, University ofCalifornia at Berkeley Graham Whitham Diane Kirkpatrick David Mellor David Robbins . Denise Scott Brown Alison and Peter Smithson David Thisdewood Retrospective Statements by Lawrence AlloWay MaryBanham Richard Harriilton Geoffrey Holroyd ~ Magda Cordell McHale Dorothy Morl~d Eduardo PaolozZi Toni del Renzi€) I Alison and Peter Smithson I James Stirling William Turnbull Colin St. John Wilson I I' I The MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts,.,a~d Landon, EngJand This publication accompanies the exhibihon. The Independent Group: Postwar Britain and the Aesthetics of Plenty February 1-April 1 ..1990 Institute of Contemporary Arts. London May 16 - September 16. 1990 Inshtuto Valenciano de Arte Moderno (IVAM). Centro Julio Gonzalez. Valencia November 4. 1990 -January 13. 1991 ,The Museum of Contemporary Art. Los Angeles. February6-April2l.1991 University Art Museum. Univ.ersity of Califorriia at Berkeley June 8 - August 18. 1991 Hood Museum of Art. Dartmouth College. Hanover. New Hampshire Organize'!. by the Hood Museum of Art. Dartmouth College. Hanover. New Hampshire; the lnstitute of Contemporary Arts. London. The Museum 0 f Contemporary Art. Los Angeles; the University Art Museum, University of Cali fornia at Berkeley. Organizing commi t tee for the catalogue and exhibition: Jacquelynn Baas (Director. UAM, Berkeley). Mary Jane Jacob. James Lingwood (Adjunct Curator. ICA,. London). David Robbins, Timothy Rub (Assistant Director, HMA, Hanover), Elizabeth Smith (Associate Curator. MOCA. Lps Angeles), and Graham Whitham. Edited by David Robbins with Barbara Anderman. Brenda Gilchrist, and Sheila Schwartz Designedby Lorraine Wild; Los Angeles Typeset in Clarinda and Joanna by Continental Typographics. Chatsworth. Cali fornia Printed by Donahue Printing Co. , Inc. , Los Angeles Copyright It> 1990 The Regents of The University o'f California . • • Richard Hamilton retrospective statement'· •. Copyright It> Richard Hamiiton; , • Learning from Brutalism' •. Copyright It> 1990. Denise Scott Brown. The Independent Group is made possible by generous grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts, Federal Agencies. Support for this proj ect was also provided by David Hockney and by The British Council. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The.lndependent Group: postw.ar Britain and the aesth~tics of plenty / edited by David Robbins p. cm. Exhibition organized by the Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth'College ... [et a1.) held between February 1. 1990 and August 16. 1991 at var;ious locations. '.~il~:;:t~ "'1..(;:\ ~~,~.l.1,;,,r:j={:::lt} Includes bibliographical references. l!t ~ ,t-:-;b. 1.10rc..I"f ISBN 0-262-18139-8 (MIT Hardcover Edition ) at.lnuilTg BfiU 1. Independent Group (Association: Great Britain)-Exhibitions. 2 Art. Modern-20th century-Great Britain-Exhibitions. It. toulf1, Wo. etnWO I. Robbins. David. 1937- II Hood Museum of Art N6766.5.153153 1990 709' .4l'074-dc20 89-43668 CIp , . Table of contents 6 Foreword and acknowledgments 187 Retrospective Statements Lawrence Alloway 10' Iiltroduction by Jacquelynn Baas Mary Banham ' Richard Hamilton 12' ChrO!1ology by Graham Whitham Geoffrey Holfoyd Magda Cordell 11cHale 49 The Independent Group and the Aesthetics ofPlenty Dorothy Nforland by Lawrence Alloway Edpardo Paolozzi Toni del Renzio '55 Sources Alison and Peter Smithson Modernist Sources James Stirling American Ads William Turnbull Science Fiction Colin St. John Wilson 63 Works in This Exhibil10n 197. Night Thoughts ofa Faded Utopia Magda Cordell by lacquelynn Baas by Theo Crosby Richard Hamilton by Gra~am Whitham Nigel Henderson by James Lingwood 201 The "As Found" and the "Found" John McHale by Jacquelynn Baas by Alison and Peter Smithson Eduardo Paolozzi by David Robbins Alison and Peter Smithson by David Robbins 203 Learning from Brutalism William Turnbull by Graham Whitham by Denise Scott Brown 123 Exhibitions by Gwham Whitham 207 The Artists ofthe IG: Backgrounds and Continuities Parallel of Life Olld Art (1953) by Diane Kirkpatrick Man. Machine and Motion (1955) This Is Tomorrow (1956) 21 3 The Independent Group and Art Education in Britain ,1950-1965 by David Thistlewood an Exhibit (1957) 221 From Ivory To;wer to Control Tower by Barry Curds 162 Selections from Critical Writings Lawrence Alloway 229 A "Glorious Techniculture" in Nineteen-Fifties Britain: Reyner Banharn The Many Cultural Contexts of the Independent Group by David Mellor Toni del Renzio Richard Hamilton 237 The Independent Group: Forerunners ofPostrnodernism? by David Robbins John McHale Eduardo Paolozzi 247 AppendiX: An Account of the 1955 IG Meetings Alison and Peter Smithson 249 Bibliography '~"<lf~·~ii.\."$:.r-4.J.i,,,~,u,,,,,,,..,,.~,_c~•...;,,.......:>~".,~:i-,,,A$:~~""~~~-~Ii'~ 1:!l1li~{*'V'''19'1o'JXIl~~~IW~''~_M>PI-_l!'''''''''''-'''''~_''''''___' __'' _______ '''''''''''''''''~_~~-'¥- •....••• ".,~~--"., 'Glorious Techniculture' lence marked the relationship of Hamilton, Henderson, and Paolozzi to this A enveloping discourse ofsodal modernisation, experienced within the con­ in Nineteen-Fifties Britain: The Many Cultural str.tints ofa British culture that was Conservative in its politics and equally conservative in its psychology. On the one hand, there was a celebration of Contexts of the Independent Group by David Mellor the FD2 an experimental British military ai.rcrafi: which gained the world's In the middle 19505. the Independent Group was the standard-bearer ofa air speed record in 1956 - by incorporating it as part ofthe WE LOVE slogans burgeoning, spectacular. technidst culture. To recover the full density ofthat one ofthe walls ofThis Is Tomorrow ("...1.132 M.P.H."); on the other hand. the moment enta.ils a patient remapping ofthe textual sites of the period. beyond the rapid development ofair- and rocket-borne thermonuclear weaponry by the simplidties ofreceived political and sodal histories. This essay, then, will the reconstituted Grand Alliance of the West seemed to Richard Hamilton to trace the regiSters. surfaces, and texts which were the cultural ground for be "leading us steadily to perdition:'] Contrasting, conflicting fantasies of Eduardo Paolozzi. Nigel Henderson. and Richard Hamilton from 1952 until catastrophe or cornucopia. ofloss or compensation, structure their pictorial the close ofthe fifties. It will be within the turbulent spaces ofresistance to works and make manifest their negotiation of the acute tensions - spec­ and complidty with these discourses - the discourse ofatomic catastrophe. tacular. deterrent. and military-industrial- of this moment ofsodal modem­ the multitude ofattitudes about consumption, the new regimes ofcommer­ isation. Perhaps these thematics are most legible in the contrast between the dal spectatorship. the meptai regions ofaviation and space as technidst leg­ pavilions ofthe SmithsonJHenderson/ Paolozzi team and the Hamiltonl ends - that we discover the authorising texts ofPaolozzi. Hamilton. and McHaleJVoelcker team at lTI. It is manifest in the tension between the semi­ Henderson. Once an intertextual franIe is placed around the various posi­ domestic figures ofthe former group's post-apocalyptic shed, and the "fun tions and productions ofthese artists, the structuring relationship with the house" ofthe latteI; with its emphasis on stimuli and pleasures - death and a encompassing culture becomes apparent. carnival moment within and against high British culture. A voradous consumption ofproducts and signs had commenced in The Independent Group developed a patriarchal model ofmodem­ the early and middle years of the decade, once the Conservative government ism, which meant that belatedness and loss were inscribed as the unsettling, accelerated polides ofmilitary-industrial growth and a consumer economy. paradoxical obverse ofThis Is Tomorrow. "The show is pervaded by nostalgia. This economic "takeoff" for a limirless expansion was enshrined in the like those current writings about jazz." wrote Basi11l1.ylor in the Spectator. period cult of the renovated. electronidsed New Elizabethan Age. The pros­ referring to the revival and dtation of the signs of heroic modernism within perous economic underpinning of the era runs directly counter to recent the exhibition and aligning it with the revivalist "fud" jazz boom." A sense Simplistic representations ofBIitish culture and the Independent Group. such of the belated can be identified here, that is, ofhaving arrived at a late 22' as that by Thomas Lawson,' Mistaking received historical myths. Lawson pre­ moment in the narrative of the fathers ofmodernism. But it was something sents a culture which had lost its confidence. "Control ofthe future seemed that might be overcome by simulating. by mimicking through photography, no longer so certain ... A nearly senile Churchill was returned [1952]. usher­ the postures and scenes of the authentic cultural heroism of a Europe that ing in a decade ofcultural enervation and decline ..." The "ruling elite," was being contemporaneously excavated by Reyner Banham in his studies Lawson declares. had a "reluctance to modernize anything."2 An opposite with Nikolaus Pevsner. Basil1ll.yloI;