Swingeing London 67 (f), 1968-69 Acrylic paint, screenprint, paper, aluminium and metalised acetate on canvas, 67 x 85 cm Tate: Purchased 1969 The MMCA presents Richard Hamilton: Serial Obsessions 3 November 2017 21 January 2018 MMCA Gwacheon The Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (Director; Bartomeu Marí) presents Richard Hamilton: Serial Obsessions, a solo exhibition of major British modern artist Richard Hamilton at Gallery 1, MMCA Gwacheon from Friday, November 3, 2017, to Sunday, January 21, 2018, as part of UK/KOREA 2017 18, a celebration of cultural ties between Korea and the UK. Richard Hamilton: Serial Obsessions is the first ever major solo exhibition of Richard
Hamilton held in Asia. In contrast to the American pop art presented by Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein that appeared in the 1960s, British pop art started in the 1950s with the emergence of consumer society after the Second World War, and it was Hamilton who led this new art movement in the UK. After his death in 2011, Tate Modern in the UK organized a major retrospective to illuminate the art world of the first standard bearer of pop art. In Korea, however, there have been very few opportunities to view his works until now. Acclaimed as a major artist representing British modern art, Richard Hamilton visually reinterpreted his observations on modern society through new concepts and perspectives. The artist was mesmerized by the imagery that was mass produced in the modern world, and focused on the reproduction of imagery and its mechanisms generated in the course of creation of human desire and consumption. The artist continuously reinterpreted the same images and themes, producing a series of works, and in the process, he explored the relationship between images and technical methods through endless exploration and experimentation. In this context, the serial works of Hamilton are the accumulated result of the artist s exploration of each image, the meaning of each image, and its intrinsic essence. Richard Hamilton: Serial Obsessions is a unique type of exhibition that highlights the artistic trajectory of the artist. Rather than a narrative retrospective that examines the collected works of Hamilton, this exhibition consists of selected works or a series of works by the artist as a close-up of the 60-year period from the 1950s to 2000s. The material and themes of the works presented at this exhibition are expansive, ranging from electronic home appliances to flowers, pop stars to political prisoners. Images borrowed from newspapers rock star Mick Jagger being arrested for drug possession, the IRA prisoner protests, and the kidnapping of an Israeli nuclear researcher have been his material over several decades. Hamilton was enchanted by images appearing in magazine advertisements for electronic
home appliances such as toasters, vacuum cleaners, and refrigerators, showing a fascination for design and technology. The artist has almost obsessively focused on such themes for a long time, and they are revealed as a complex mechanism which represents the society behind them through methods such as repetition and reinterpretation. This exhibition will provide an opportunity to discover the multilayered art world of Richard Hamilton, who continuously stretched himself as an observer as well as participant. To celebrate the artist s first solo exhibition in Asia, Rita Donagh, the wife of the artist and a painter, will visit Korea to participate in the opening ceremony. Many works owned by Donagh are presented at this exhibition. On Friday, November 3, a cultural program in conjunction with the exhibition, Exhibition Tour, is offered to promote the understanding of Richard Hamilton s art world through a conversation with James Lingwood, a prominent curator who contributed to this exhibition as a guest curator. Since 1991, Lingwood has served as a co-director of Artangel (established in 1985), a public art agency in England, along with Michael Morris. An illustrated book that introduces readers to the works of Richard Hamilton is scheduled to be published with the exhibition. The book will include articles written by Andrew Wilson, a senior curator at Tate Modern and a prominent researcher in the art circle who has closely studied Hamilton s series of works, and by Declan McGonagle, the first director of the Irish Museum of Modern Art. Most importantly, thirteen essays written by the artist himself will be presented in the book, sharing his critiques on artwork and contemporary society. Detailed information is available at the MMCA website (http://www.mmca.go.kr).
For general enquiries, please call +82-2-3701-9500 (Seoul Branch, MMCA) For more information on the exhibition, please contact Exhibition Department 1 of MMCA at +82-2-2188-6241 Please check the link below for images and further information: http://webhard.mmca.go.kr id : mmcapr1 / pw : 0987 (guest > 2017 > MMCA 2017 Exhibition)
Works Self-Portrait Richard Hamilton was a key figure in the British and international Pop Art movements, as well one of its main theoreticians. The majority of his work is concerned with the art history traditions in contemporary art. Four Self-portraits 05.3.81 takes portraiture as its starting point, using new media to expand its boundaries. Instead of limiting the portrait to a single image, Hamilton uses four. In the early 1980s, the artist took Polaroids of himself and added layers of acrylic color. After ten years, he digitally converted the photos into transparencies to be made into enlarged prints. Mounted on canvas, they epitomize the layered way in which Hamilton s work deals with artistic media. Palindrome, 1974, Lenticular acrylic, laminated on collotype in 5 colours, 60.9 45.7cm, Hamilton Estate Self-portrait 05.3.81a, 1990, Oil on Cibachrome on canvas,75 x 75 cm, Hamilton Estate
$he $he completed in 1961. Two years later, he was invited to make a cover for Living Arts magazine. He responded to the commission with a selfportrait montage (made with the stylist Betsy Scherman) in which modern appliances including a well-stocked fridge, telephone, vacuum cleaner, record player and toaster were arranged around a 1963 Ford Thunderbird adorned with a model, and with Hamilton somewhat incongruously dressed as an American footballer. $he, 1958-61, Oil paint, cellulose nitrate paint, paper and plastic on wood, 133 95 10cm, Tate: Purchased 1970 $he, 1958, Collotype and screenprint, 25 x 17 cm (sheet), Hamilton Estate
Toaster In 1966 Hamilton made the first of his Toaster works in which the object was the sole focus. In an unequivocal embrace of modernity and its reflective surfaces, he constructed in Perspex and chromed steel a new rendition of the side of the Braun HT 2 toaster. Hamilton s close identification with the object was confirmed by his substituting the Braun logo with his own; hamilton (all in lower case) inscribed in red on the black surface. The immaculately engineered object was transformed into an unlikely icon. A print then followed, in which Hamilton reintroduced the language of marketing to the newly branded icon. Even then, Hamilton was not finished with the image. In 1969, he made three further studies exploring its reflective potential, possibly as experiments for the cover of the catalogue of his upcoming show at the Tate. Toaster study I shows the object back in the home, with an outof-focus vase of flowers behind. In Toaster study III, the image of the artist focusing his camera on the object is reflected in the metallic panel. The artist s camera is pointing directly at the viewer. Toaster deluxe deconstructed, 2008, Inkjet, stainless steel, polycarbonate, on Somerset Velvet for Epson paper 505 gsm, GM WaterWhite Museum glass, tulip wood, brass, expanded neoprene, polyethylene, 88.5x73.3x3cm, Hamilton Estate Toaster deluxe deconstructed, 2008, Inkjet, stainless steel, polycarbonate, on Somerset Velvet for Epson paper 505 gsm, GM WaterWhite Museum glass, tulip wood, brass, expanded neoprene, polyethylene, 88.5 x 73.3 x 3 cm, Hamilton Estate
Swingeing London The group of Swingeing London 67 works Hamilton made in 1968-69 also foreground Hamilton s serial obsession. Hamilton gathered photos and headlines about the drugs bust of his dealer Robert Fraser and Mick Jagger, cut them out of the newspapers and assembled them into a collage. To keep the work within the realm of reproduction, he then made a photo-offset lithograph of the collage. Having identified the specific image of Jagger and Fraser handcuffed together in a police van he needed, he secured a copy of the print from the photographer, and made more studies in different media. The titles are indicative of the process: Swingeing London 67 poster; Swingeing London 67 working drawing; Swingeing London 67 screen print. Hamilton emerged from this immersion with the image, and his analysis of how it could be cropped, coloured and framed to produce variations of possible meaning in a series of paintings on which a photographic silkscreen based on an enlarged print from the original photo was combined with different paints - oil, acrylic, enamel, polymer giving each version a different tonality and feel. Different elements are introduced, such as a collaged detail of an autumnal forest and the addition of chromed steel handcuffs in the final work in the series, Swingeing London 67 (f). Swingeing London 67 (f), 1968-69, Acrylic paint, screenprint, paper, aluminium and metalised acetate on canvas, 67x 85cm, Tate: Purchased 1969 Swingeing London 67 (d), 1968-69, Oil on canvas, 67.31 x 84.46 cm, Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth
Flower-Pieces The discovery of some kitsch 3D postcards of flowers had been the starting point for Hamilton s extended Flower-piece series. Some initial watercolour studies were followed by a protracted experiment in printmaking. Over several months, Hamilton worked on different plates using a range of techniques. He made additions to some, such as listing the inks he was working with. Eventually there were 18 trial proofs made between 1973-74, a portfolio of 7 etchings, Tri-chromatic flower piece progressives and three oil paintings. Flower-piece II, 1973, Oil on canvas, 95x72cm, Hamilton Estate Trichromatic flower-piece, 1973-74, Colour aquatint in 3 colours and black from 4 plates, 42.4 x 33 cm (plate) / 65.2 x 50.5 (sheet), Hamilton Estate
The citizen The citizen (1981-3) is the first in a trilogy of definitive paintings that Hamilton made over the course of a decade in response to the challenge of picturing the political situation in Northern Ireland and its representation in the media. The genesis of the painting was typical. Intrigued by the martyrlike figure in the cell that he d seen on his TV at home, Hamilton gathered the source material and simultaneously summoned up a figure from his own past, the Irish warrior hero Finn MaCool of whom he had first made a drawing over 30 years earlier. A half-length study of the prisoner and two collages with cibachrome prints and oil paint exploring the diptych form and the pattern of the swirling marks on the wall preceded the completion of the large double-panelled painting. The citizen, 1985, Dye transfer, 64x63cm, Hamilton Estate The citizen, 1981-83, Oil on canvas, 2 canvases, each 200 x 100 cm, Tate: Purchased 1985
Seven Rooms In 1994, Richard Hamilton began work on a series of large-scale computer-generated paintings made specifically for the group exhibition Five Rooms at the Anthony d Offay Gallery in London in 1995. To make this suite of works, Hamilton began by photographing each of the exhibition walls in the d Offay Gallery including floors, spotlights and beams and scanned the images into his computer. He then digitally placed the cropped and modified photographs of his home onto the scans of the gallery walls. The frame of the gallery space represented in each of the paintings is common across the series, and tethers each panel to the precise environment that bore it. Within this frame is an image that appears to be a photo-realistic painting but is in fact a digitally-manipulated photograph (or composite of photographs) portraying a room in his home North End, for which each work is respectively named: Kitchen, Bathroom, Passage, Dining room, Bedroom, Dining room/kitchen and Attic, Seven Rooms constitutes an exploration of the dynamics of space, a consideration of the extent to which an illusion of reality could be retained despite a reorganization of its elements. Dining Room, 1994-95, Cibachrome on canvas, 122x162cm, Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art Attic, 1995-96, Cibachrome on canvas, 122 x 244 cm, Philadelphia Museum of Art: Purchased with funds contributed by the Committee on Twentieth- Century Art, with additional funds contributed by Mr. and Mrs. Keith L. Sachs, The Dietrich American Foundation, and Marion Boulton Stroud, 1997