Richard Hamilton: Portraits of the Artist
Richard Hamilton by Tino Tedaldi, 1980. Photo © Tino Tedaldi
- Date
- Monday 19th December 2011 - Monday 14th May 2012
- Time
- Saturday-Wednesday: 10am – 6pm. Late Opening: Thursday & Friday: 10am – 9pm
- Place
- National Portrait Gallery, St Martin’s Place, London, WC2H 0HE
- Learn More
- http://www.npg.org.uk
A new display at the National Portrait Gallery plays tribute to the life and career of artist Richard Hamilton.
The display of ten portraits of Hamilton drawn from the Gallery’s Collection was originally intended to mark his approaching 90th birthday; now the exhibition has become a posthumous retrospective, since Hamilton passed away on 13 September 2011.
Born in Pimlico, London in 1922, Hamilton was explelled from the Royal Academy in 1940 for failing to respond to instruction in painting, and completed his studies at the Slade School of Art (1948-51). During the 50s he became a member of the Independent Group, attending its regular meetings at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London to focus on the study of popular culture.
Hamilton is widely cited as a founders of Pop Art, thanks to his seminal work 'Just what Is it that makes today’s homes so different, so appealing?' becoming one of the icons of the movement. However, this is to simplify and misconstrue his career: celebrating lowbrow culture was never his aim and he did not share pop art's idolisation of advertisements and comic strips.
Although he was fascinated by the visual culture of the modern Western age - consumer products, packaging, fashion, cinema and magazines - this took an analytical rather than enshrining apporach, and it was always matched by his study of high art. Likewise, he defied categorisation by working diversely in different media, from printmaking to sculpture, photography to computer technology.
Spanning three decades of the artist's life, the earliest portraits on display include a photograph by Lord Snowdon taken in 1963, the year Hamilton first visited America, and David Hockney’s etched portrait of Hamilton which was made from life in 1971, the same year Hockney and Hamilton protested against museum admission charges. Other moments in Hamilton’s long artistic career are captured here by photographers such as John Hedgecoe, Michael Cooper, Tino Tedaldi, Nicholas Sinclair and Carolyn Djanogly.
