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Richard Hamilton at the Serpentine Gallery, London W3
anne, Tuesday 16 February 2010
There is a major show of Hamilton's work at the Serpentine Gallery, London W3 from 3rd March until 25th April 2010. He was interviewed for The Observer on Sunday 14th February 2010, pp4-5 see:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2010/feb/14/richard-hamilton-interview-serpentine-cooke
How amazing that the Observer should reinforce the Fathers of Pop myth! I've written a letter, so let's see what happens.....
It is fantastic that Richard Hamilton is receiving well-deserved attention as one of our most important twentieth century artists and thinkers. It is equally disappointing to find an esteemed newspaper like The Observer rehashing a tired art historical myth and reproducing factual inaccuracies. The links between the work of Hamilton and his colleagues in the Independent Group in 1950s London and American Pop Art in the 1960s are tenuous, to say the least. The much quoted letter to Peter Smithson about Pop was about popular culture. This is much more radical - fine artists and architects seriously considering popular culture in the 1950s, and not dismissing it out of hand? Remarkable. And the Independent Group did not organise This is Tomorrow in 1956. The Group stopped meeting in 1955 and Theo Crosby and the Whitechapel Art Gallery organised it.
In short, there is far more to Richard Hamilton and the Independent Group than Pop Art. But perhaps its easier to digest his work as proto-Pop, which is a pity.
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