Pop in the Age of Boom: Richard Hamilton’s ‘Just what is it that makes today’s homes so different, so appealing?’ by JOHN-PAUL STONARD MEASURING BARELY ONE FOOT square, Richard Hamilton’s fame, however, the immediate origins of Hamilton’s collage Just what is it that makes today’s homes so different, so appealing? have remained obscure. The new archival and source material is one of the most celebrated images in twentieth-century presented in this article sheds light on these origins, address- British art (Figs.14 and 15). It was created for the catalogue ing problems surrounding the authorship of the work. Newly and used for one of the posters for the exhibition This is identified sources for various parts of the collage allow for a Tomorrow held at the Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, dur- revised interpretation of its contents. ing August and September 1956. Collaged with images drawn The background of and preparations for the historic chiefly from American illustrated magazines, it has become exhibition This is Tomorrow are well known. In a context an emblem of the Age of Boom, the post-War consumer of enthusiasm for cross-disciplinary exhibitions of Con- culture of the late 1950s.1 It has also become a manifesto for structivist-inspired art and architecture,6 a group of young a movement. In one of the first accounts of British Pop art, artists, architects and critics met during early 1955 in the studio published in 1963, it was presented as a catalytic work, and the of the painter Adrian Heath and decided, after heated debate, next year was decreed ‘the first genuine work of Pop’.2 More on the basic format of their as yet untitled exhibition.7 Theo recently it has been compared with the Demoiselles d’Avignon, Crosby, who was at that moment the editor of Architectural has been hailed as ‘the starting point of planetary Pop Art’ and Design, headed the organisation committee. Eleven teams of as the ‘perfect Pop work’.3 John Russell’s description over three or four individuals were formed, each with the task of thirty years ago of the endless ‘pockets of meaning’ that can be constructing a display for the exhibition, which was to open on found in ‘this little picture’ remains true today.4 Above all, it 9th August the following year. Crosby approached Bryan was a startling prognosis of the use of comic books, tinned Robertson, the director of the Whitechapel Art Gallery, who food and burlesque nudes that formed the iconography of Pop agreed to host the exhibition. The budget was minimal and, art, and of the widespread use by artists of the metonymic as preparations got underway, it was decided that each team language of advertising. Such a mythic status is all the more would design and print a poster and contribute six pages to remarkable for an object not originally intended for display the catalogue (Fig.16). Each was also required to subsidise the but as a design for lithographic reproduction.5 Despite this materials for its displays. From the outset the intentions were For their help in the preparation of this article, I would like to thank Jo Baer, (20th October to 20th November 1964), to the American collector Ed Janss, Mary Banham, Stuart Blacklock (EMI Archive), Robert Cooper, Magda Cordell in 1964, for £320; London, Tate Gallery Archive (hereafter cited as TGA) McHale, Rita Donagh, Gerlinde Engelhardt (Kunsthalle Tübingen), Elisabeth Fair- 863/Hanover Gallery. The collage was to have been displayed in the exhibition Euro- man (Yale Center for British Art, New Haven), Tim Fogerty (Muscle Memory), pean drawings (Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1966), organised by Mark Francis, Adrian Glew (Tate Archive), Graphic Imaging Technology, Brook- Lawrence Alloway. Alloway had written to Hamilton asking for four drawings that lyn, New York, Richard Hamilton, Rod Hamilton, Dian Hanson, Martin Harrison, had been displayed in Hamilton’s 1964 Hanover Gallery exhibition, but rejected Richard Hollis, Randolphe Hoppe (Jack Kirby Museum), Harry Mendryk, John Hamilton’s subsequent suggestion that Just what is it . should be included; L. McHale Jr., Richard Morphet, Petra Cerne Oven (University of Reading Depart- Alloway to R. Hamilton, 26th July 1965, Richard Hamilton archive (cited hereafter ment of Typography), Randall Scott (Michigan State University Libraries), Posy as RHA). It was then displayed in the exhibitions Pop Art, London (Hayward Gallery) Simmonds, Candy Stobbs (Whitechapel Art Gallery), Aurélie Verdier and Anna 1969; Richard Hamilton, London (Tate Gallery), Eindhoven (Stedelijk van Abbe- Yandell. Particular thanks go to Richard Hamilton for permission to cite from letters museum) and Bern (Kunsthalle) 1970; and Richard Hamilton, New York (Solomon R. in his archive, and to the Gagosian Gallery, London. Guggenheim Museum) 1973. The collage was sold on 20th August 1974 to the 1 The phrase was first used in Queen, 15th September 1959. German collector Georg Zundel, and simultaneously became part of the collection 2 J. Reichardt: ‘Pop Art and After’, Art International 7, 2 (25th February 1963) of the Kunsthalle Tübingen. Thereafter, it was shown in the exhibitions: Richard pp.42–47, esp. p.43; M. Amaya: Pop as Art. A Survey of the New Super Realism, Hamilton Studies – Studien 1937–1977, Bielefeld (Kunsthalle), Tübingen (Kunsthalle) London 1965, p.32. and Göttingen (Kunstverein) 1978; Westkunst: zeitgenössische Kunst seit 1939, Cologne 3 W. Guadagnini: ‘Coincidences’, in M. Livingstone and W. Guadagnini, eds.: exh. (Messegelände, Rheinhallen) 1981; Modern dreams. The rise and fall of Pop, New York cat. Pop Art UK. British Pop Art 1956–1972, Modena (Palazzo Santa Margherita; (Clocktower Gallery) 1987; and High & low: modern art and popular culture, New York Palazzina dei Giardini) 2004, pp.37–41, esp. p.37. (Museum of Modern Art), Chicago (Art Institute) and Los Angeles (Museum of 4 J. Russell: ‘Introduction’, in exh. cat. Richard Hamilton, New York (Solomon R. Contemporary Art) 1990–91. A photograph taken by Hamilton at the time of the Guggenheim Museum) 1973, pp.10–11. 1987 Clocktower Gallery exhibition has been substituted for the original collage in a 5 The collage was first displayed as a work of art, while still in the collection of the number of subsequent exhibitions. artist, in the exhibition Nieuwe Realisten at the Gemeentemuseum, The Hague (24th 6 A. Fowler: ‘A forgotten British Constructivist group: the London branch of June to 30th August 1964), the catalogue to which included a reprint of Jasia Groupe Espace, 1953–59’, THE BURLINGTON MAGAZINE 148 (2007), pp.173–79. Reichardt’s essay, cited at note 2 above, and a large reproduction. It was to a certain 7 D. Robbins, ed.: exh. cat. The Independent Group: Postwar Britain and the Aesthetics extent owing to the enthusiasm of the curator and writer Walter Hopps that the of Plenty, Hanover (Hood Museum of Art), London (ICA), Los Angeles (Museum collage acquired an independent life: he possessed a colour slide of the work which of Contemporary Art) and Berkeley (University Art Museum) 1990–91, pp.30 and he used in lectures in the late 1950s, and it was through his agency that the work was 135–36. sold, on the occasion of Hamilton’s exhibition at the Hanover Gallery, London the burlington magazine • cxlix • september 2007 607 POP IN THE AGE OF BOOM POP IN THE AGE OF BOOM vague – an exhibition of the most forward-looking tendencies, engaging directly with the contemporary world. Although this impulse arose in part from the dynamic think-tank atmosphere of the Independent Group at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, the exhibition was for the most part defined by contem- porary British attitudes to Constructivism. Both constituents were founded on ideas that enabled cross-disciplinary discus- sion between architects, artists and philosophers. Among the eleven teams, Group Two comprised the architect John Voelcker and the Independent Group mem- bers John McHale and Richard Hamilton. Also important for Group Two’s contribution were Terry Hamilton (Hamilton’s wife), the Hungarian painter Magda Cordell and her husband, Frank Cordell, a musical director at EMI. Anne Massey has recounted how the Cordells, McHale and Lawrence Alloway formed a caucus within the Independent Group.8 Although Voelcker played an important role, the combined interests of McHale and Hamilton largely determined Group Two’s contribution. McHale and Alloway had taken over con- venorship of the Independent Group towards the end of 1954 and reoriented its discussions towards American popular culture, advertising, Hollywood cinema and science fiction.9 Members gave talks on their particular interests, including an influential address by Reyner Banham on car styling.10 Hamilton’s contribution dealt with American domestic appli- ances: ‘I was fascinated by “white goods” as they were called, washing machines and dishwashers and refrigerators – not 16. ‘12 Posters for This is Tomorrow’, reproduced in Architectural Design (September simply as objects in themselves as designed objects, but also in 1956), p.304. Included are the posters designed by John McHale (top row, second the ways in which they were presented to the audience’.11 from left) and Richard Hamilton (top row, third from left) for Group Two. Eduardo Paolozzi’s use of advertising images from American magazines was formative and fed into a general and collabo- discussions, McHale left for a period of study at the Yale rative interest in such material. ‘Tear sheets’ of advertising School of Fine Art, New Haven, returning only at the end of 14. Just what is it that makes images were passed around, and ‘tackboards’ of assorted adver- May 1956. ‘We could only correspond by letter’, Hamilton today’s home so different, so 12 appealing?, by Richard tising imagery were common in artists’ studios and homes.