Richard Hamilton was an English artist known as the ‘daddy of Pop Art’. Creating one of the first widely recognised pieces of Pop Art,
Just What is it That Makes Today’s Homes so Appealing? (1956). A collage made from all the mod cons and must haves of the time.
He was reflecting the influx of consumerism that had come to Britain from the States, how the country was changing.
His works were very accurate at documenting the economic, social and political status of the times they were created in. He also mangages to show his sense of humour through his work and his Britishness shines through, differentiating him from the American Pop Artists, either with his dry humour or his british grittiness.
Portrait of Hugh Gaskil As A Famous Monster of Filmland (1964) is oil and collage on photograph. This is one of his more political works, turning a politician of the 1960s into a grotesque creation. Hamilton himself was very politically active, taking part in political rally’s and protests, even being arrested for his involvement.
This piece reflects Hamilton’s disagreement and dissatisfaction at Labour and inparticular Gaskil’s policies.
Just What is it That Makes Today’s Homes so Appealing? (1992) is an updated version of his 1956 work. This piece was showing how much or how little the world had changed since the original was made, with updated technolgy and the changing role of the man and woman in the home. In this version the woman is strong while the man is slumped over the computer not showing the physical prowess he had in the 1950s.
Hamilton’s work interested me so much as I find his techniques, processes and source material influential to those which I like to use. I love how his collages have come to represent certain eras of time so accurately and feel S though they can be read like a text book.
His source material of contemporary fashions, desires and stereotypes and also in much of his work, a huge celebrity influence really appeals to me. I feel a similarity to my own work in technique and source material while also being a million miles apart from each other.
Swingeing London 67 f
Using another face I had used the eyes from, I placed it over my original collage and it changed the image again. I quite like the result of this one it fits nicely over the top.
I’m growing to really like the effect photocopying my work creates. I enlarged it from A4 to A3 and made a colour copy, I hadn’t attached the face permanently so I then attached it to a black and white copy and made a colour photocopy of that and then a black and white one.
I don’t really like the colour and black and white copy but I think either the full colour or the full black and white copy are most impressive particularly the black and white one. Again I am happy with the final image but not with the finish that photocopying provides.
I photocopied and enlarged the original collage to a black and white A3 copy then copied it another four times, zooming by 100% each time. I made two copies of each image then used acrylic paint to highlight certain areas of one copy of each image. I used the same colours on each image but rearranged where I placed the colours, then displayed the images along with the black and white copies.
I think they look quite good together as a whole piece rather than as eight seperate images, so I will take a better photograph than this and have them all aligned properly so I can reproduce the whole image. I like how the image has become more and more grainy as I photocopied each photocopy, so getting further and further away from the original magazine image, reminding me of the notion of the original that I looked at last year.
Collage made from images from ASOS Magazine and Harper’s Bazaar
The top image is a model from the fashion magazine from the ASOS website while the eyes come from a David Bailey photograph of his wife from an interview in Harper’s Bazaar.
I like the combination of the two types of imagery: one from a free mailout by a relatively unknown fashion photographer, the other from a high end glossy magazine, the image being from a world renowned photographer. Combining two worlds.
As the original Bailey image was black and white I decided to experiment with the photocopier and reproduced the whole image in black and white. This changes the impact of the image, I’m not sure if I prefer the original or the reproduction both are quite effective collages.
I then played with the colour settings on the photocopier and produced the image with a magenta tint and one with a turquoise tint. Although these images don’t have a particularly high impact on the viewer it was interesting to see the results of the process.
This was another experiment, I had photocopied either side of a face from a Nivea advert, one being the actual face the other being the text from the article on the other side of the page, I then interlinked them and they fitted over the original collage so the eyes just showed through. I put them over the turquoise copy and then photocopied it again.
This was agin more about the experimentation of the process rather than the final piece.
After not being fully satisfied with the results of my Bambi collage, I decided to photocopy the image without the background to see what it would like like in black and white.
I find the image in black and white is much more effective and after seeing it like this and on a larger scale as I enlarged it to A3. After doing this I feel as though it’s expressing what was in my head much more efficiently. The idea had been forming already but as usual when I make work it takes the process and completion for me to realise what I am trying to express.
To me the image expresses naivety and a loss of innocence, how you can meet something or someone in life who you can trust and no matter how intelligent or savvy you consider yourself to be this person or thing can turn you into the innocent and something can happen that makes that be taken advantage of or lost.
I continued to zoom in on the image, photocopying the photocopies and not the original image. I found as the image became more grainy and the quality changed, this enhanced the feeling I was aiming for. As a series of images the enlargements shown in order are more impressive and effective than the original images.
This was an experiment with the process of copying and enlarging and I find the final results interesting and the process created a viable result, to display it I would like to produce the images with a better finish than the photocopies.
