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NEW HAVEN — The candy-colored universe of 1960s London is groovin’ at the Yale Center for British Art with an exhibit by the father of British pop art, Richard Hamilton.
In the United States, Hamilton is often thought of Britain’s answer to Andy Warhol. But it was Hamilton who created the first work of pop art, and he was the first to define its ethic: mass-produced, low-cost, young, sexy, witty, transient, glamorous, gimmicky, expendable, and of course, popular.
If you’re a Beatles fan, you’ve probably already consumed pop art. Hamilton designed the "White Album" of 1968 and the poster that came inside it.
The exhibit covers this poster and other highlights of Hamilton’s work, including prints featuring Mick Jagger and Marilyn Monroe, his artistic riffs on mass-market advertising and his current works inspired by James Joyce’s "Ulysses" and by the violence in Northern Ireland.
"This is a very rich exhibition that requires a lot of looking and scrutiny," said Gillian Forrester, an associate curator of prints and drawings at the museum.
Hamilton, 81, selected and arranged the items in the exhibit. In a recent tour with the media he described in a carefree and friendly manner how some of the prints were created.
Advertising was one of the first inspirations for Hamilton and other British artists who formed the Independent Group to explore modernism.
In 1956, he entered a collage called "Just what is it that makes today’s homes so different, so appealing?" in an exhibit at the Whitechapel Art Gallery.
The work showed a black-and-white man and a woman with idealized bodies, surrounded in their collaged home by a colorful array of consumer goods: a tape player, a canned ham, a vacuum cleaner and a television.
The man holds in his hand a giant red lollipop emblazoned in yellow with the word "POP".
Hamilton said he would get inspired to create a work of art based on an advertising phrase, such as "hers is a lush life," from a car ad, or from a print ad for Dunlop tires that showed how tires evolved through the decades.
Hamilton’s prints are labor-intensive and always pushing the technical boundaries of what a print can do, Forrester said.
His 1970 work "Kent State" required 13 stencils and was produced in a batch of 5,000 — an enormous number for such a print.
Hamilton recalled that he had been trying for five days to capture images off the television, using a camera equipped with a cable, when the BBC aired footage of Ohio National Guard soldiers shooting Kent State students.
The grainy image is of a bloodied student lying on the ground. Hamilton said he struggled with whether to use it.
"I felt this was close to the edge. It’s almost untouchable," he said. "It was a bit of a battle, but I went ahead."
The student survived the shooting, and Hamilton said he gave the young man some of the proceeds from the sale of the prints.
Photos also inspired his prints "My Marilyn," from 1965, made of publicity photos of Monroe, and "Release," made in 1972 from a news photo of Jagger and Hamilton’s art dealer, Robert Fraser.
Most of the photos in "My Marilyn" were rejected by Monroe — she emblazoned each disfavored photo with a giant X using eye liner or some other cosmetic, Forrester said.
The pictures — ones she accepted and rejected — appear in a collage done in pinks, berries, coppers and other colors of lipsticks and nail polish.
"Release" was inspired by a news photo of the arrest of Jagger and Fraser on marijuana possession charges.
Hamilton assembled a collage of news clips and was amused by the varied accounts given in each article, such as the color of Jagger’s jacket or Fraser’s age. He did six paintings of the news photo with variations that featured the newspapers’ errors.
The exhibit also features a few of Hamilton’s work in other media, such as a giant orange and blue plaque of cellulose on panel, emblazoned with the words "SLIP IT TO ME." It was inspired by a button Hamilton bought in a city park.
The title of the 1989 work is unexpected: "Epiphany," a reference to "Ulysses" which Hamilton has revisited many times since he first read it in 1946.
Hamilton is at work today trying to produce a print representing each of the 18 chapters of "Ulysses." He said he is seeking not a literal illustration of the book, but a "visceral reaction" to each chapter. The latest work in the series, "The heaventree of stars," in 1998, is a digital print.
"Epiphany," Forrester said, follows Joyce’s idea of the experience as a "transformative event to change the commonplace" and epitomizes the gimmicky, sexy, witty spirit of pop art.
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