Pop in the Age of Boom: Richard Hamilton’s ‘Just what is it that makes today’s homes so different, so appealing?’ by JOHN-PAUL STONARD

MEASURING BARELY ONE FOOT

square, Richard Hamilton’s Just what is it that makes today’s homes so different, so appealing? is one of the most celebrated images in twentieth-century British art (Figs.14 and 15). It was created for the catalogue and used for one of the posters for the exhibition This is Tomorrow held at the Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, during August and September 1956. Collaged with images drawn chiefly from American illustrated magazines, it has become an emblem of the Age of Boom, the post-War consumer culture of the late 1950s.1 It has also become a manifesto for a movement. In one of the first accounts of British Pop art, published in 1963, it was presented as a catalytic work, and the next year was decreed ‘the first genuine work of Pop’.2 More recently it has been compared with the Demoiselles d’Avignon, has been hailed as ‘the starting point of planetary Pop Art’ and as the ‘perfect Pop work’.3 John Russell’s description over thirty years ago of the endless ‘pockets of meaning’ that can be found in ‘this little picture’ remains true today.4 Above all, it was a startling prognosis of the use of comic books, tinned food and burlesque nudes that formed the iconography of Pop art, and of the widespread use by artists of the metonymic language of advertising. Such a mythic status is all the more remarkable for an object not originally intended for display but as a design for lithographic reproduction.5 Despite this

fame, however, the immediate origins of Hamilton’s collage have remained obscure. The new archival and source material presented in this article sheds light on these origins, addressing problems surrounding the authorship of the work. Newly identified sources for various parts of the collage allow for a revised interpretation of its contents. The background of and preparations for the historic exhibition This is Tomorrow are well known. In a context of enthusiasm for cross-disciplinary exhibitions of Constructivist-inspired art and architecture,6 a group of young artists, architects and critics met during early 1955 in the studio of the painter Adrian Heath and decided, after heated debate, on the basic format of their as yet untitled exhibition.7 Theo Crosby, who was at that moment the editor of Architectural Design, headed the organisation committee. Eleven teams of three or four individuals were formed, each with the task of constructing a display for the exhibition, which was to open on 9th August the following year. Crosby approached Bryan Robertson, the director of the Whitechapel Art Gallery, who agreed to host the exhibition. The budget was minimal and, as preparations got underway, it was decided that each team would design and print a poster and contribute six pages to the catalogue (Fig.16). Each was also required to subsidise the materials for its displays. From the outset the intentions were

For their help in the preparation of this article, I would like to thank Jo Baer, Mary Banham, Stuart Blacklock (EMI Archive), Robert Cooper, Magda Cordell McHale, Rita Donagh, Gerlinde Engelhardt (Kunsthalle Tübingen), Elisabeth Fairman (Yale Center for British Art, New Haven), Tim Fogerty (Muscle Memory), Mark Francis, Adrian Glew (Tate Archive), Graphic Imaging Technology, Brooklyn, New York, Richard Hamilton, Rod Hamilton, Dian Hanson, Martin Harrison, Richard Hollis, Randolphe Hoppe (Jack Kirby Museum), Harry Mendryk, John McHale Jr., Richard Morphet, Petra Cerne Oven (University of Reading Department of Typography), Randall Scott (Michigan State University Libraries), Posy Simmonds, Candy Stobbs (Whitechapel Art Gallery), Aurélie Verdier and Anna Yandell. Particular thanks go to Richard Hamilton for permission to cite from letters in his archive, and to the Gagosian Gallery, London. 1 The phrase was first used in Queen, 15th September 1959. 2 J. Reichardt: ‘Pop Art and After’, Art International 7, 2 (25th February 1963) pp.42–47, esp. p.43; M. Amaya: Pop as Art. A Survey of the New Super Realism, London 1965, p.32. 3 W. Guadagnini: ‘Coincidences’, in M. Livingstone and W. Guadagnini, eds.: exh. cat. Pop Art UK. British Pop Art 1956–1972, Modena (Palazzo Santa Margherita; Palazzina dei Giardini) 2004, pp.37–41, esp. p.37. 4 J. Russell: ‘Introduction’, in exh. cat. Richard Hamilton, New York (Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum) 1973, pp.10–11. 5 The collage was first displayed as a work of art, while still in the collection of the artist, in the exhibition Nieuwe Realisten at the Gemeentemuseum, The Hague (24th June to 30th August 1964), the catalogue to which included a reprint of Jasia Reichardt’s essay, cited at note 2 above, and a large reproduction. It was to a certain extent owing to the enthusiasm of the curator and writer Walter Hopps that the collage acquired an independent life: he possessed a colour slide of the work which he used in lectures in the late 1950s, and it was through his agency that the work was sold, on the occasion of Hamilton’s exhibition at the Hanover Gallery, London

(20th October to 20th November 1964), to the American collector Ed Janss, in 1964, for £320; London, Tate Gallery Archive (hereafter cited as TGA) 863/Hanover Gallery. The collage was to have been displayed in the exhibition European drawings (Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1966), organised by Lawrence Alloway. Alloway had written to Hamilton asking for four drawings that had been displayed in Hamilton’s 1964 Hanover Gallery exhibition, but rejected Hamilton’s subsequent suggestion that Just what is it . . . should be included; L. Alloway to R. Hamilton, 26th July 1965, Richard Hamilton archive (cited hereafter as RHA). It was then displayed in the exhibitions Pop Art, London (Hayward Gallery) 1969; Richard Hamilton, London (Tate Gallery), Eindhoven (Stedelijk van Abbemuseum) and Bern (Kunsthalle) 1970; and Richard Hamilton, New York (Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum) 1973. The collage was sold on 20th August 1974 to the German collector Georg Zundel, and simultaneously became part of the collection of the Kunsthalle Tübingen. Thereafter, it was shown in the exhibitions: Richard Hamilton Studies – Studien 1937–1977, Bielefeld (Kunsthalle), Tübingen (Kunsthalle) and Göttingen (Kunstverein) 1978; Westkunst: zeitgenössische Kunst seit 1939, Cologne (Messegelände, Rheinhallen) 1981; Modern dreams. The rise and fall of Pop, New York (Clocktower Gallery) 1987; and High & low: modern art and popular culture, New York (Museum of Modern Art), Chicago (Art Institute) and Los Angeles (Museum of Contemporary Art) 1990–91. A photograph taken by Hamilton at the time of the 1987 Clocktower Gallery exhibition has been substituted for the original collage in a number of subsequent exhibitions. 6 A. Fowler: ‘A forgotten British Constructivist group: the London branch of Groupe Espace, 1953–59’, THE BURLINGTON MAGAZINE 148 (2007), pp.173–79. 7 D. Robbins, ed.: exh. cat. The Independent Group: Postwar Britain and the Aesthetics of Plenty, Hanover (Hood Museum of Art), London (ICA), Los Angeles (Museum of Contemporary Art) and Berkeley (University Art Museum) 1990–91, pp.30 and 135–36.

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14. Just what is it that makes today’s home so different, so appealing?, by Richard Hamilton. 1956. Collage of printed materials and gouache, 25.7 by 24.5 cm. (Kunsthalle Tübingen, Sammlung Zundel).

vague – an exhibition of the most forward-looking tendencies, engaging directly with the contemporary world. Although this impulse arose in part from the dynamic think-tank atmosphere of the Independent Group at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, the exhibition was for the most part defined by contemporary British attitudes to Constructivism. Both constituents were founded on ideas that enabled cross-disciplinary discussion between architects, artists and philosophers. Among the eleven teams, Group Two comprised the architect John Voelcker and the Independent Group members John McHale and Richard Hamilton. Also important for Group Two’s contribution were Terry Hamilton (Hamilton’s wife), the Hungarian painter Magda Cordell and her husband, Frank Cordell, a musical director at EMI. Anne Massey has recounted how the Cordells, McHale and Lawrence Alloway formed a caucus within the Independent Group.8 Although Voelcker played an important role, the combined interests of McHale and Hamilton largely determined Group Two’s contribution. McHale and Alloway had taken over convenorship of the Independent Group towards the end of 1954 and reoriented its discussions towards American popular culture, advertising, Hollywood cinema and science fiction.9 Members gave talks on their particular interests, including an influential address by Reyner Banham on car styling.10 Hamilton’s contribution dealt with American domestic appliances: ‘I was fascinated by “white goods” as they were called, washing machines and dishwashers and refrigerators – not simply as objects in themselves as designed objects, but also in the ways in which they were presented to the audience’.11 Eduardo Paolozzi’s use of advertising images from American magazines was formative and fed into a general and collaborative interest in such material. ‘Tear sheets’ of advertising images were passed around, and ‘tackboards’ of assorted advertising imagery were common in artists’ studios and homes.12 Hamilton has described the enthusiasm with which Group Two began preparations for the exhibition and the importance of the interest he and McHale shared in ‘Pop Art, pop music, cinema and all the other things you see in a list when Pop Art is mentioned’.13 Group Two was unique in conceiving its contribution as a distillation of the ideas developed in the Independent Group – before it ceased to function in spring 1955. As it turned out, their show-stealing display, an ‘ebullient carnival piece’ according to Alloway, was dramatically different from any other stand.14 The themes of optical illusion and popular culture were combined in a display surrounding a ‘fun-house’ structure which incorporated a jukebox. The eventual success of their contribution followed severe difficulties that arose during the period of preparation. In August 1955, after a few preliminary

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15. Catalogue for the exhibition This is Tomorrow, Whitechapel Art Gallery, 1956, showing two-page spread designed by Richard Hamilton, including the collage Just what is it . . ..

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A. Massey: The Independent Group. Modernism and Mass Culture in Britain 1945–59, Manchester and New York 1995, p.79. 9 Ibid., pp.77–93. 10 ‘Borax, or the Thousand Horse-Power Mink’ was given on 4th March 1955. 11 ‘Richard Hamilton in conversation with Michael Craig-Martin’, in A. Searle: Talking Art 1, London 1993, pp.67–83, esp. p.73. 12 B. Colomina: ‘Friends of the Future: A Conversation with Peter Smithson’, October 94 (2000), pp.3–30, esp. p.9. 13 R. Hamilton: ‘Pop Daddy’, Tate Magazine 4 (March/April 2003), pp.60–62.

16. ‘12 Posters for This is Tomorrow’, reproduced in Architectural Design (September 1956), p.304. Included are the posters designed by John McHale (top row, second from left) and Richard Hamilton (top row, third from left) for Group Two.

discussions, McHale left for a period of study at the Yale School of Fine Art, New Haven, returning only at the end of May 1956. ‘We could only correspond by letter’, Hamilton remembered, ‘and their tone became increasingly acrimonious. Finally, we were no longer friends’.15 Those letters that have survived from the correspondence shed light on the evolution of the collage and offer some clarification of its recently contested attribution and status as a collaborative work. The focus of this contention is the trunk of American ephemera – magazines, advertisements and records – collected by McHale during his stay in New Haven which were used by Hamilton, at least in part, for the construction of the collage. It has been suggested that this implies a collaboration and that McHale may even have supplied a design.16 Of all the members of the Independent Group, McHale appears at that moment as the one most engaged with the collage medium, American advertising and the impact of new domestic technical appliances. His interest in American

14 L. Alloway: ‘The Development of British Pop’, in L. Lippard, ed.: Pop Art, London 1966, pp.27–67, esp. p.39. 15 Hamilton, op. cit. (note 13), p.62. 16 The standard attribution is given by Massey, op. cit. (note 8), p.118: ‘A collage drawn from American mass media sources, mainly supplied by John McHale as a result of his visit to Yale’. A more recent controversy concerning the authorship of the collage was summarised by Jeremy Hunt in his article ‘This is Tomorrow 1956–2006’, State of Art (September/October 2006), pp.24–25. The debate has continued on the website Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.org).

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magazines can be seen from his collection of ‘tear sheets’ from magazines reaching back as far as 1931.17 It is clear that he was a pivotal figure for that small number of British intellectuals who took American popular culture seriously, but his later emigration to the United States has meant that his contribution has been somewhat overlooked. Hamilton himself later recorded that ‘John McHale’s catholic intellect applied itself with presbyterial rigour to everything and generously distributed the fruits of his enquiry to the flock. When his bumper bundle from a first visit to the United States was ceremonially presented at the ICA, the first Elvis Presley records to land on these shores were protectively interleaved with copies of MAD magazine so that no one knew what was ballast and what cargo’.18 The German art historian Jürgen Jacobs has suggested that McHale’s Independent Group lecture ‘Technology at Home’ influenced Hamilton’s decision to include an image of a woman vacuuming.19 In his famous letter to Peter and Alison Smithson, which provided one of the first definitions of Pop culture, Hamilton enumerates those events of the ‘post war years’ which he felt were important, listing McHale’s ‘Ad image research’ alongside the work of Paolozzi and the Smithsons.20 Furthermore, McHale was one of the leading exponents of collage within the ICA milieu. His works were included in the exhibition Collages and Objects, organised by Alloway and designed by McHale himself, held at the ICA during October and November 1954. This important exhibition showed works by Picasso, Braque, Schwitters and others alongside collages by members of the Independent Group, principally Paolozzi and Nigel Henderson. Significantly, Hamilton was not involved. The press release for the exhibition describes it as part of the ‘collage revival’ in post-War Britain.21 A further exhibition of eleven collages by McHale was held in the library of the ICA shortly after This is Tomorrow closed. In his short catalogue introduction to the exhibition, Alloway compares McHale’s collages to those of Schwitters and Ernst and also draws attention to McHale’s interest in American magazines, particularly their advertisements for food, with ‘visions of popular appetite, chocolate landscape cake, salad sculpture, solid-gold chicken’.22 The types of collage McHale was making at this moment show nevertheless the influence of abstraction rather than of the naturalistic space used in Just what is it . . .. As Banham pointed out, McHale’s clear interest on his return from America was to ‘produce a mechanistic figure’, in particular that of a robot.23 His Machine made America II (Fig.17) designed for the front cover of Architectural Review (24th May 1957) was typical of this kind of work, showing the influence of Art Brut mixed with an interest in robotics, science fiction and

17 This collection is now in the archive of the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven (hereafter cited as YCBA). 18 C. Kotic, J. McHale, L. Alloway, R. Banham and R. Hamilton: exh. cat. The Expendable Ikon: Works by John McHale, Buffalo (Albright-Knox Art Gallery) 1984, p.47. 19 J. Jacobs: Die Entwicklung der Pop Art in England von ihren Anfängen bis 1957, Frankfurt 1986, p.90; J. McHale: ‘Technology in the Home’, Ark 19, (March 1957), pp.24–27. 20 Richard Hamilton to Peter and Alison Smithson, 16th January 1957 (RHA). The seminal statement of McHale’s ideas was contained in two articles: ‘The expendable ikon 1’, Architectural Design 29 (February 1959), and ‘The expendable

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18. Shoe-Life Stories, by John McHale. c.1955. Double-page spread from collage book, mixed media, 25.1 by 41.5 cm. (John McHale archive, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven).

food advertisements.24 The collages he exhibited in the ICA library in 1955 depended, Alloway wrote, on a ‘capacious Dubuffetesque human contour’, and appeared ‘democratically Arcimboldesque’.25 Alongside this abstract manner, other works are based on typographic photomontage. His most innovative works in the medium are his collage books, for instance Shoe-Life Stories, made after April 1955, which use varying page sizes and other devices to create constantly changing juxtapositions of images drawn from magazines and newspapers, in particular headlines and other cut-out text (Fig.18).26 Together with two other books made around the same time, Shoe-Life Stories has yet to receive the critical attention it deserves. Banham’s and Alloway’s comments are borne out by the content of letters from McHale to Richard and Terry Hamilton sent from America during late 1955 and early 1956. These further illuminate the intellectual background to This is

Tomorrow, as well as McHale’s own wide interests. Writing at the beginning of November 1955, McHale describes the excitement of studying in the Yale School of Fine Art with such luminaries as Norman Ives, Herbert Matter and, above all, Josef Albers as faculty members.27 The interests he expresses in this and subsequent letters are largely concerned with perception, visual illusions and science fiction. ‘Main kick now is perception via [Adelbert] Ames etc coupled with Joe’s [Josef Albers] field of colour vibration’. McHale’s distance from the evolving organisation of the exhibition, a problem compounded by the wait required for airmail, is shown in a letter sent around mid-January in which he asks Richard and Terry Hamilton if the space allocated to the newly formed Group Twelve of Alloway, Toni del Renzio and Geoffrey Holroyd would reduce the space allocated to Group Two.28 He also refers to the ‘New Haven version of the I.G.’, which ‘flourishes or rather did flourish last term . . .’. In London pressure was beginning to mount for Hamilton and Voelcker to finalise details for Group Two’s contribution, in particular for the poster and the catalogue which were due on 1st May. Voelcker sent details of requirements for the catalogue and poster to both Hamilton and McHale in mid-February, following a meeting of the organising committee that he had attended two days earlier.29 At this meeting the designer Edward Wright had presented a mock-up of the catalogue, and the amount of pages allocated to each group was decided.30 Wright was also to design the posters, and the requirements for each group were similarly confirmed. The deadline was emphasised by Hamilton in a letter to McHale towards the end of March, indicating that McHale

had been out of touch: ‘Had hoped to hear from you by now re clump’ (‘clump’ was the term used by Group Two to refer to the individual teams).31 The content of Group Two’s contribution had yet to be finalised, Hamilton requesting suggestions and material from McHale, and adding: ‘You can see that it is imperative that one or the other of us starts on this very very soon so do let me know your view immediately’. Hamilton signed off: ‘I shall be seeing Magda next week I presume and she, no doubt, will have information as to the date of your return’. Magda Cordell, who was having an affair with McHale (for whom she eventually left Frank Cordell), visited him in New Haven from the beginning of February to around mid- to late March. On 18th March Voelcker had informed the Hamiltons by letter that McHale was to send material for the catalogue ‘with Magda when she returns’. At around the same time, McHale wrote to Hamilton agreeing to design the poster, but requesting that Hamilton execute his design in England.32 He also confirmed that his materials and commentary would reach Hamilton via Magda who was returning from her visit to New Haven: ‘In the next two days following this you will have my notes on structure of John V. [the central display of the Group Two space], catalogue, comments, suggestions for images etc. etc’. These materials were accompanied by a letter and a mock-up for the catalogue, sent to the Cordells’ flat in Cleveland Square, Paddington, where McHale also kept a studio.33 Notes and a mock-up of the layout for the catalogue by McHale (Fig.19) accompanying this letter made clear his attitude towards the catalogue as largely visual–scientific, suggesting pictorial use of the equation E = MC 2, and also the standard diagram of ‘sense extension’, derived from a book by E.W. Meyers, a

ikon 2’, ibid. (March 1959). 21 Press release for Collages and Objects, dated 8th October 1954; TGA, 955.1.12.61 2/32. 22 L. Alloway: ‘Introduction’, exh. cat. John McHale Collages, London (ICA) 1956. 23 Kotic et al., op. cit. (note 18), p.40. 24 A comment on the image appeared on the colophon page: ‘The cover personage, by John McHale, with the tetragram of power – Neutral, Drive, Low, Reverse – graven on his heart, was assembled from typical fragments of the cultural complex he also symbolizes; Machine Made America. The source of the material was one of America’s favourite flattering mirrors, coloured magazine illustrations, and reflects a

world of infra-grilled steak, pre-mixed cake, dream-kitchens, dream-cars, machinetools, power-mixers, parkways, harbours, ticker-tape, spark-plugs and electronics’; The Architectural Review 121, 7 (24th May 1957), p.293. 25 Alloway, op. cit. (note 14), p.35. 26 ‘Shoe-Life Stories McHale no.2A’; YCBA. 27 John McHale to Richard and Terry Hamilton, 15th November 1955; RHA. 28 John McHale to Richard and Terry Hamilton, undated (after 5th January 1956); RHA. 29 John Voelcker to Richard and Terry Hamilton, 16th February 1956 (copy sent to John McHale); RHA.

30 Edward Wright (1912–88) taught an experimental typography workshop at the Central School of Art from 1950 to 1955, and then taught at the Royal College of Art. He was an influential figure in the use of modernist typography and graphic design. 31 Richard Hamilton to John McHale, undated letter (mid- to late March 1956); RHA. 32 John McHale to Richard Hamilton, undated letter (mid-March 1956); RHA. 33 The letter can be dated by McHale’s reference to the fact that it was written during the spring recess of the Yale School of Fine Art (21st March to 1st April). For these and all subsequent term dates, see Bulletin of Yale University. University catalogue number for the year 1955–1956, New Haven 1955.

17. Machine made America II, by John McHale. 1956. Cover for Architectural Review (24th May 1957).

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19. Suggested design for the Group Two contribution to the catalogue of This is Tomorrow, by John McHale. (Richard Hamilton archive).

British expert on cybernetics who had given an address to the Independent Group in March 1955 on the theme of ‘Probability and Information Theory and Their Application to the Visual Arts’.34 His suggestions for the remaining pages were generalised combinations of text and symbols ‘to approximate [the] human image’. Apart from his preoccupation with perception and visual illusion, the only reference to popular advertising material was the possibility of using ‘very big posters or billboards which when cut down may provide images’, giving Baked Beans posters as a suggestion, and also material culled from science fiction sources. Despite this, McHale’s ideas for This is Tomorrow were defined by scientific diagrams rather than photography – ‘at the moment 34

Massey, op. cit. (note 8), p.91. In conversation with Michael Craig-Martin, Hamilton suggests that McHale ‘returned with a box of exotic things he had acquired there’. Evidently this could not have been the case if the materials were used for the production of the collage; see Searle, op. cit. (note 11), pp.67–83, esp. p.74. This error is repeated in many accounts of preparations for the exhibition; see, for example, C. Stephens and K. Stout: ‘This Was Tomorrow’, exh. cat. Art & The 60s. This Was Tomorrow, London (Tate Gallery) 2004, p.11. 36 Of particular note was MAD 22 (April 1955), the ‘Special Art Issue’, which traced the fictional career of the artist ‘Bill “Chicken Fat” Elder’, based on the illustrator 35

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for this exhibition I am off the direct photo-image’, he writes in the same letter. Although this letter arrived around the same time as Magda Cordell’s return from New Haven, it is unclear whether it had been posted or was brought back by her. What is certain is that she conveyed the trunk containing McHale’s collection of American ephemera, Elvis Presley records and copies of MAD magazine.35 This is an important point – as the deadline for the material for the catalogue, including Just what is it . . ., was 1st May, it would have been impossible for Hamilton to have used material from the trunk if McHale had brought it back himself on 31st May. The collage was therefore made between Magda Cordell’s return at the end of March and 1st May. Aware of this impending deadline, Hamilton wrote to McHale at the end of April with the news that a photo-collage was to be included in the catalogue. This letter is untraced but can be inferred from McHale’s response. In an undated letter sent towards the end of April, shortly before the end of the spring term for the Yale School of Fine Arts, he complains that the Hamiltons had ‘held their noses at the thought of collage’ during the preparations, wanting to retain an aura of seriousness for the catalogue. ‘Now when I fall over backward trying to be serious you tell me you “crazy housed” my suggestions, and are working a la Mad [that is, in the style of MAD magazine]. Big Deal. Put me down for some lessons when I get back, I’d like to be a crazy collagist too . . .’. McHale’s exasperated response reflects Hamilton’s lack of interest in collage before this date, but also indicates that the idea to include such a collage ‘a la Mad’ came from Hamilton himself, after seeing copies of the magazine that had arrived in the collection of material brought back by Magda Cordell at the end of March. Unlike more popular titles, MAD was not then available in England. Hamilton’s interest in MAD is of some significance for the origins of Just what is it . . .. Although it was a leading title in the late 1950s, on a par with household names such as Life and Playboy, MAD was unique in offering a critical position on 1950s consumerism, exposing techniques of manipulation, often with the most biting parodies of advertising methods and media outlets. The April 1956 issue, for example, ran a spoof advertisement for ‘Marlbrando’ cigarettes, ‘The Trademark of Two-Fisted He-Men’.36 McHale recognised the importance of MAD in the second part of his essay on ‘The expendable ikon’, published in 1959, and used pages from the magazine in a design for an unrealised collage book made at about the same time.37 He describes it as ‘dadaist satirical’, and as representing ‘a kind of feedback control mechanism’ to the mass media message with reference to Marshal McLuhan. Previous commentaries on the Independent Group have focused on the influence of Sigfried Giedion’s Mechanization takes

Command of 1948, which reprinted numerous contemporary advertisements, including a satire on the ‘Overgadgeted kitchen’.38 Although no material from the magazine was used in Just what is it . . ., the indirect influence of MAD suggests a more ironic take on advertising culture than has previously been ascribed to the collage. McHale’s grudging acceptance of the ‘crazy collagist’ approach suggests that he too may have wished for a more serious approach both to the catalogue and the exhibition, the type of earnest constructivism that characterised many of the other This is Tomorrow collaborations. Following on from his exasperated response to Hamilton’s apparent change of approach, he noted: ‘Fine – I include some you may use’. This may well indicate that McHale sent tear sheets or cut-outs to be used for the collage at this point, which would have arrived before the deadline of 1st May. In response to McHale’s letter, Terry Hamilton wrote an angry reply, dated 1st May, pointing out that it was McHale rather than Hamilton who had ‘gone all highbrow’ and rejected the idea of collage, rather than vice versa, and also that ‘Richard has been hard at it getting the thing produced’.39 Interestingly, she goes on to describe the collage as ‘rationalised mad – a room containing categories on the list Richard sent you earlier’. To what extent the material McHale included in his letter, or material from the trunk, was used for Hamilton’s collage is still open to question, and is dealt with in more detail in the individual cases discussed below. American publications were widely available in London, and had been collected by and exchanged among artists for a number of years. Referring to eye-witness accounts, John Russell has described the ‘collective delight’ with which British artists greeted such Americana: ‘Painters pounced on the advertising pages of McCall’s Magazine the way Dyce pounced on Raphael when he was asked to paint a Madonna’.40 Hamilton has described the importance of his visits with Henderson and Paolozzi to the reading room of the American Embassy in Grosvenor Square, London, where the latest magazines were available, and direct comparisons could be made between English and American publications: ‘There was Picture Post, but that didn’t have the glamour of Life magazine in the post-war years’, Hamilton later recalled.41 An exhibition of photographs from Life magazine held at the ICA in early 1952 attests not only to the importance but the availability of the title in London.42 International editions of certain publications were also available, as Paolozzi’s 1952 collage Keep it simple, keep it sexy, keep it sad demonstrated, showing the front of the ‘Atlantic Overseas Edition’ of TIME, The Weekly Newsmagazine. For his use of popular imagery drawn from magazines and comics, Paolozzi is one of the most prominent forerunners of Just what is it . . .. The 1948 collage from his ‘Bunk’ series, It’s

and MAD collaborator Will Elder. 37 ‘Unfinished Collage Book Project. McHale no.14C’, by John McHale, rubberstamped ‘13 November 1959’ on reverse; YCBA. 38 S. Giedion: Mechanization takes Command. A Contribution to Anonymous History, New York 1948, p.580; Robbins, op. cit. (note 7), p.57. 39 Terry Hamilton to John McHale, 1st May 1956; RHA. 40 J. Russell: ‘Introduction’, in S. Gablik and J. Russell: Pop Art Redefined, London 1969, p.33. 41 Searle, op. cit. (note 11), p.70. 42 Memorable photographs from Life Magazine opened on 6th March 1952; TGA

955/1/12/37. A further exhibition at the ICA during September 1956, concurrent with This is Tomorrow at the Whitechapel, displayed cartoons from the New Yorker magazine by artists such as James Thurber and Saul Steinberg. It was organised by the American Federation of Arts and travelled to Manchester, Edinburgh and Belfast; TGA 955.1.12.80. 43 Particular thanks to Magda Cordell McHale for information on this topic; conversation with the present writer, 4th July 2007. 44 Richard Hamilton in conversation with the present writer, 7th February 2007. 45 The list is reprinted in R. Hamilton: Collected Words 1953–1982, London 1982, p.24. There is no copy of this list in Hamilton’s personal archive. Hamilton was

20. Photograph of an East End shop front, by Nigel Henderson. 1949–53. Reproduced in V. Walsh: Nigel Henderson. Parallel of Life and Art, London 2001, p.52.

a psychological fact pleasure helps your disposition, used the April 1947 issue of the Ladies’ Home Journal; other collages show comics such as Hi-Ho and Breezy Stories. American comics were widely available in London, as can be seen from Henderson’s photograph taken around 1950 (Fig.20) of an East End shop front, displaying the sign ‘Stop! Here for American Comics. Biggest selection in East London’. Other wellknown outlets for comics and magazines were the newsagents S. Solosy Ltd., in the Charing Cross Road, and Moroni’s news-stand in Old Compton Street. News-stand displays of magazines were themselves an object of fascination, offering a sudden frieze of saturated colour to the post-War flâneur.43 Further source material may have been found in the flat of Frank and Magda Cordell at 52 Cleveland Square, where Hamilton made the collage with the assistance of Terry Hamilton and Magda Cordell, recently returned from America. According to Hamilton, the collage was produced in a single morning, after Hamilton had provided Terry and Magda with a list of the things that he wanted the collage to represent, and they retrieved them from the magazines available in the flat.44 Hamilton’s iconographic prescription shows the dual interest in science and popular culture that had marked the Independent Group: ‘Man, Woman, Humanity, History, Food, Newspaper, Cinema, TV, Telephone, Comics (picture information), Words (textual information), Tape recording (aural information), Cars, Domestic appliances, Space’.45 Terry’s and Magda’s assistance was clearly important in determining the choice of imagery for the collage; such a modus operandi was entirely in keeping with the division of domestic labour that so fascinated Hamilton in the advertising material of the day.46 Whereas later works by clearly fond of tabulating imagery in this manner, producing similar lists of ‘Imagery’ and ‘Perception’ for the Group Two display at This is Tomorrow, and also in the letter addressed to the Smithsons in January 1957, often taken as a manifesto for Pop art in Britain. Copies of these lists can be found in Hamilton’s personal archive and are cited in ibid., pp.22 and 28. 46 For the association of mass culture with femininity and its uncritical reflection in the work of many Pop artists, see C. Whiting: A Taste for Pop. Pop Art, Gender and Consumer Culture, Cambridge 1997, which contains a full bibliography of this subject.

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21. This is Tomorrow, perspective of exhibition, by Richard Hamilton. 1956. Collage and ink on paper, 30.5 by 47 cm. (Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart).

22. See, hear, smell, touch, by Richard Hamilton. 1956. Collage, 21 by 22.1 cm. (Museum Ludwig, Cologne).

Hamilton have been served by detailed expositions, chiefly by the artist himself, the collaborative circumstances in which Just what is it . . . was made have meant that its origins have remained vague and often erroneously explained.47 This point is substantiated by Hamilton’s often-cited observation that the title of the collage was discovered on a cut-out scrap when the collage had been completed. As is made clear below, Hamilton was in fact reuniting the text with the advertising image of a domestic interior that forms the basis of the collage. The disagreement between McHale and the Hamiltons was not about the authorship of the collage, but rather about the 47

For Hamilton’s descriptions, see R. Hamilton: ‘An exposition of $he’, in idem, op. cit. (note 45), pp.34–39; Cf. also idem: ‘Hommage à Chysler Corp’, in Architectural Design (March 1958); idem: ‘Urbane Image’, Living Arts (London) 1963. 48 John McHale to Richard and Terry Hamilton, undated letter; RHA. 49 P.H. Simpson: ‘Comfortable, Durable, and Decorative: Linoleum’s Rise and Fall from Grace’, APT Bulletin (1999), pp.17–24. Coincidentally, the Armstrong Cork Company Ltd., a British subsidiary of Armstrong Floors, placed a full-page advertisement in the catalogue for This is Tomorrow.

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general tone of the exhibition: was it to be serious-scientific or MAD-ironic? There was little question of individual credit for contributions either in the catalogue or in the display, and it was perhaps on this basis that Group Two was in fact able to produce its historic contribution. Nevertheless, there seems little reason to suspect that McHale was responsible for Just what is it . . ., other than supplying essential imagery from magazines, both in the trunk and in a separate letter, sent, with grudging acceptance of the ‘Mad collage’ idea, just in time for the deadline. The group nevertheless continued to collaborate. McHale in fact designed a separate poster for Group Two (Fig.16) which Hamilton executed in the typographic department of Newcastle upon Tyne University, where he was teaching during the period in which the exhibition was being prepared. McHale was evidently pleased with the results, which he received in early May, a few weeks before his departure from America. He wrote to thank Hamilton for having sent a copy of the poster and adds: ‘Your [Hamilton’s] comment “that the poster looks as if you had a hand in it, and the catalogue myself”, is excellent and completely in the tradition of our section!!’48 As it transpired, Group Two was to contribute two posters to the exhibition: Hamilton realised the potential of the ‘Mad collage’ he had produced, and used it to produce a second poster to use alongside McHale’s (Fig.16). Hamilton had in fact made two other collages relating to the exhibition. A perspective visualisation of the Group Two installation was made to illustrate a feature on the exhibition in the issue of Architectural Design for September 1956 (Fig.21). This collage clearly shows the optical illusion on one wall, facing the popular culture mural, a Kia-Ora bottle (replaced in the final display with an inflatable Guinness bottle) and a jukebox, while the ‘fun-house’ structure shows an enlarged photograph of spaghetti and meatballs, indicating a space Hamilton had reserved for McHale, and the large labelled head – here Pierre Mendès-France, replaced in the final installation with a photographically enlarged image of a similar ‘labelled head’ collage, this time featuring President Tito. This second collage, See, hear, smell, touch (Fig.22), which was also used in the exhibition catalogue, relates to Just what is it . . . both in format and by the use of text labels. The three collages, all now in museum collections in Germany, form a coherent group that marks a pivotal moment in Hamilton’s career. Against this background, a detailed examination of Just what is it . . . and its sources can be conducted. The perspectival and luminous coherence of the interior presented suggests that a single image underlies the scene. This indeed is the case: the image was taken from the June 1955 issue of the Ladies’ Home Journal, which carried on the inside cover an advertisement for the Pennsylvania-based company Armstrong Floors, showing a bright interior fitted with ‘Armstrong Royelle Linoleum’

(Fig.23). Armstrong had been pioneers in advertising since 1917, their products appearing regularly in leading American magazines.49 This advertisement, which constituted the basis for Just what is it . . . and provides a large amount of the imagery in the final collage, would have appealed to Hamilton as it was almost the same size as the catalogue and, as a cover rather than an inside page, it presented a relatively sturdy support on which to attach further elements. Although the flooring is only partially exposed in the room, the Royelle Linoleum is central, appearing rather as an empty stage waiting to be filled.50 In particular the first line of the advertising copy printed below the images clinched the choice: ‘Just what is it that makes today’s homes so different, so appealing?’ This text was cut out and used as a caption for Just what is it . . ., displayed on the facing page of the Whitechapel catalogue (Fig.15). Although Hamilton has described coming across the text after he had made the collage, cut off from its original source in ‘some picture past recall’, in fact text and image were reunited. The Ladies’ Home Journal was certainly not unknown in Britain at the time: Peter Smithson describes both this and the Woman’s Home Companion being sent to Britain during the War.51 Alison Smithson took clippings from the journal, and the type of advertisements the Smithsons found within directly influenced their important essay ‘But Today We Collect Ads’, published just after This is Tomorrow closed, in which they described the ‘magical [. . .] technical virtuosity’ of contemporary advertising. A short list of magazine sources at the end of their article suggested that the Ladies’ Home Journal was by far the chief source for advertisements for their inquiry.52 Alongside the Saturday Evening Post, also published by Curtis Publications, it was unrivalled in the quality of its colour reproductions and generous format. Both titles were printed using offset lithography, resulting in a remarkable range and depth of colour and a clarity of photographic reproduction by contrast with the more smudgy primitive letterpress that was used for magazines such as Picture Post in England. For Richard Hoggart, the newer style of journals compared with the older ones were ‘rather like the latest synthetic cocktail to a glass of not-very-strong beer’.53 New types of food advertising, emphasising particularly a type of salacious tomato-red hue, led to the phrase ‘lick the page’ magazines.54 Such magazines were ‘Paradise Regained’, according to Banham: ‘Remember we had spent our teenage years surviving the horrors and deprivations of a six-year war. For us, the fruits of peace had to be tangible, preferably edible’.55 Among the first images that Hamilton attached to the Armstrong advertisement was the view of the Earth – not from a satellite, as the image might suggest, but from an aerial camera that exaggerated the Earth’s curvature: the picture comprises many photographs taken from a height of

50 The collage has been described as a ‘stage set of modernity, a showroom filled with up-to-date things. . .’; T. Lawson: ‘Bunk: Eduardo Paolozzi and the Legacy of the Independent Group’, in L. Alloway et al.: exh. cat. Modern Dreams. The Rise and Fall of Pop, New York (Clocktower Gallery) 1987, pp.18–29, esp. p.25. 51 B. Colomina: ‘Friends of the Future: A Conversation with Peter Smithson’, October 94 (2000), pp.3–30, esp. p.11. In 1957 the Ladies’ Home Journal had a circulation of 5,449,000, significantly more than its nearest rival McCall’s; see T. Peterson: Magazines in the Twentieth Century, Urbana 1964, p.190.

52 A. Smithson and P. Smithson: ‘But Today We Collect Ads’, Ark 18 (November 1956), pp.49–50. 53 R. Hoggart: The Uses of Literacy, London 1986 (1st ed. 1957), p.222. Hoggart was referring to popular publications in England, but his remark is equally applicable to developments in America. 54 Many thanks to Posy Simmonds for this information. In the new age of market research and advertising, four-colour reproduction gave magazines a distinct advantage over television advertising. Although a few colour programmes were

23. Advertisement for Armstrong Royal Floors. Reproduced in Ladies’ Home Journal (June 1955).

one hundred miles. This is one of the few images that can with some degree of certainty be traced to McHale’s archive, which contains two copies of the double-page advertisement (taken from Life, 5th September 1955),56 one of which is missing its left page, the source of the section of the image that Hamilton used in the collage (Fig.24). The image probably refers to ‘Space’ on Hamilton’s list of subjects, although knowledge of the image shows that it might more accurately represent ‘Humanity’. With the ceiling fixed, the rest of the stage machinery and dramatis personae could be installed. Fulfilling the criteria ‘Cinema’, the pastoral view through the window in the original was obliterated by a reproduction of a well-known photograph of the Warner Cinema, Broadway, on the opening night in 1927 of Alan Crosland’s The Jazz Singer, starring Al Jolson.57 Hamilton very carefully recreated the effect of a window by the addition of a window bar down the centre and at the top, using an opaque pigment, probably gouache. The theme of entertainment was continued to the right with the addition of the television. This was taken from an broadcast in the early 1960s, broadcast costs were still prohibitively high; see Peterson, op. cit. (note 51), p.37. 55 R. Banham: Fathers of Pop, revised transcript cited in Massey, op. cit. (note 8), p.84. 56 John McHale archive, YCBA, Box 2. 57 Hamilton has described seeing this film in London shortly after its release as the ‘high-point’ of his childhood; conversation with the present writer, 25th June 2007.

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24. ‘100 Mile High Portrait of Earth’, double-page feature published in Life (5th September 1955).

advertisement for Stromberg-Carlson televisions reproduced in the issue of Life for 10th January 1955 (Fig.25).58 Curiously, the image shown on the screen of a woman telephoning has been cut out and then put back. The most likely explanation is that the excision was made by Terry Hamilton and Magda Cordell when the material was gathered, and later replaced by Hamilton. By affixing the television over part of the fireplace in the original image, and obliterating the rest of it, Hamilton evokes a change recurring in many households in the 1950s: with the simultaneous introduction of central heating and television, the fireplace was no longer the traditional centre of the home. Covering the insipid painting in the Armstrong advertisement, a poster showing the comic book Young Romance answered the subject of ‘Comics (Picture Information)’ on Hamilton’s list. Although in the picture space it is further back than the television set, it in fact overlaps it, and was thus stuck down afterwards. It is evidently too small to be the actual cover of Young Romance, no.26, 1949, but is rather a ‘house ad’ – an advertisement placed by the publisher, Crestwood Publications, in another of their titles – in this case another romance comic, Young Love, no.15, of November 1950 (Fig.26).59 Young Romance was the first pictorial romantic–escapist comic, following on from pulp-story publications such as Intimate Confessions, used by

27. Advertisement for Ford Fairlane. Reproduced in Fortune magazine (February 1955). 26. Advertisement for Young Romance 26 (1949), included in Young Love 15 (1950), p.23. (Collection of Harry Mendryk; © Joe Simon and Jack Kirby).

Paolozzi in his collage I was a rich man’s plaything (1947) which inspired numerous imitators. As has often been pointed out, Hamilton’s use of the comic cover, drawn by the leading comic book artist Jack Kirby, anticipates the use made of comic books by Roy Lichtenstein. In direct contrast, the framed formal portrait to the right of the Young Romance, as well as providing a moment of bathos, may be taken to represent ‘History’ on Hamilton’s list. The sitter is visibly not John Ruskin, as has been suggested,60 and the source is as yet unidentified. Hamilton repeated the irreverent gambit of including a token ‘old master’ in Group Two’s This is Tomorrow display, a framed reproduction of Van Gogh’s Sunflowers from the National Gallery, London, at that time in the collection of the Tate Gallery. More up to date was the heraldic Ford logo, cut to create a lampshade slightly larger than the one it covers in the original. The crown was used as an insignia for the Ford Fairlane, a model released in early 1955, appearing on the bonnet, side and between the back seats, and was also used to advertise this and other models manufactured concurrently. Although the precise source has yet to be identified,

slightly smaller and larger versions appeared in Fortune magazine and Holiday in February and May of 1955, and in the February 1955 issue of National Geographic (Fig.27). It is unlikely that the advertisement was repeated later in the year, when new Ford models were being introduced. Redecoration of the back wall was completed with the addition of a manila-toned masking sheet, cut very accurately to fit around the collaged images and the rubber plant that remained from the Armstrong advertisement. A similar sheet of white paper suggests the effect of light from the window, an anomaly given the nocturnal setting. Affixed over the lower left corner of the Al Jolson view, the image of the woman vacuuming the stairs, with the now legendary claim that ‘ordinary cleaners reach only this far’, was taken from the same issue of the Ladies’ Home Journal as the Armstrong Royal Floors advertisement (Fig.28). On page 139 the Hoover Company advertised its new Constellation model, ‘with exclusive double-stretch hose’. The Space Age apparatus, the first vacuum cleaner to drift on an air bed, is juxtaposed with an ‘actual photo’ of the new model in use: ‘Look at the reach of the Constellation!’ Cut around the

advertisement appears in a few other issues of Young Love and Young Romance, only Young Love 15 has the lettering in red.

60 M. Garlake: New Art New World. British Art in Postwar Society, New Haven and London 1998, p.143.

58

25. Advertisement for Stromsberg-Carlson television manufacturer. Reproduced in Life (10th January 1955).

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The advertisement was also included in The American Home (November 1954). Many thanks to Randolphe Hoppe, of the Jack Kirby Museum, and to Harry Mendryck for researching and finding this source on my behalf. Although the house 59

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28. Advertisement for Hoover Constellation. Reproduced in Ladies’ Home Journal (June 1955).

29. Advertisement for Armour Star Ham. Reproduced in Look (20th April 1954).

bottom stair, the slanting dado and the woman vacuuming at the top, the affixed cut-out transformed the top of the green cupboard at the far left of the Armstrong Floors advertisement into something more monumental in appearance.61 Intriguingly, as with the screen of the Stromberg-Carlson television mentioned above, the black arrow with the words ‘ordinary cleaners reach only this far’ has been cut out and then reinserted. It may be that the arrow was originally cut out for use elsewhere, then put back when it became clear how well it fitted the stairs. The arrow creates a link with the signs on the façade of the Warner Cinema, visible through the window, and adds to the verbal saturation of the room. Hamilton’s interest in the motif of the arrow had been made explicit in the Trainsition series of four paintings made in 1954. As Anne Massey describes, he had taken the arrow motif directly from Paul Klee, whose Pädagogisches Skizzenbuch (Pedagogical Sketchbook; 1925) had been the subject of Independent Group discussions in November and December 1953.62 Whereas in the Trainsition paintings Hamilton uses the arrow to indicate the direction of movement across the flat surface of the canvas, in Just what is it . . . the arrow functions

as it does in the original advertisement, to draw attention to a particular aspect of the image. The bodybuilder at the centre of the composition, having entered from stage left, is not Charles Atlas, as has frequently been suggested, but the champion bodybuilder Irwin ‘Zabo’ Koszewski.63 He represents ‘Adam’, according to Hamilton, alongside the burlesque ‘Eve’ teetering on the sofa.64 The source of the photograph of Zabo is particularly fitting: the September 1954 issue of the pocket-sized magazine Tomorrow’s Man, published by the Irvin Johnson Health Studio in Chicago (Fig.30). This was one of a new genre of smallformat magazines that appeared during the 1950s, including the Los Angeles-based publication Physique Pictorial (founded 1951) and the Chicago-based Vim (1954), as well as Male Classics founded in 1956 in Greek Street, London, and the Hollywood-based Fizeek (1959). These differed from existing ‘physical culture’ titles such as Muscle Power, Strength and Health and Iron Man in carrying little pretence at being aimed at a heterosexual bodybuilding readership. Koszewski was a well-known model who appeared in many of these titles. The photograph used in Just what is it . . . was taken after he had

61 Two other notable appearances of the vacuum cleaner in twentieth-century art may be mentioned as bracketing Hamilton’s interest in the Hoover Constellation: Arthur Dove’s 1925 collage The critic (Whitney Museum of American Art, New York), incorporating an advertisement for the ‘Energex Home Favourite Model’; and Jeff Koons’s more recent ‘readymade’ sculpture New Hoover Convertibles, New Shelton Wet/Dry Displaced Double Decker, 1981–87 (Museum of Modern Art, New York).

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Massey, op. cit. (note 8), pp.74–75. Many thanks to John McHale Jr. for bringing Koszewski’s identity to my attention. The identification was first published in D. Waldman: Collage, assemblage, and the found object, London 1992, p.269. Charles Atlas appears in Paolozzi’s Evadne in Green Dimension of 1949, featuring the exclamation ‘Bunk!’ For the collage and the source illustration, see W. Konnertz: Eduardo Paolozzi, Cologne 1984, p.43. Dominic Sandbrook is 63

won third prize in the 1954 Mr America competition held in Los Angeles. The magazine, which was of the ‘posing strap’ genre, attributes the photograph to ‘Bruce of Los Angeles’,65 the well-known ‘physique photographer’ Bruce Bellas (1909–74). As with many other male physique photographs of the time, a posing suit – a modern fig leaf, perhaps – has been added to the pouch in the original photograph. The ‘peerless’ Koszewski, who had also won the ‘best abdominals’ prize, suggestively holds a Tootsie Roll Pop in place of a dumbbell, inserted through a slit cut between his thumb and forefinger. This image is taken from an advertisement for Tootsie Roll Pops, a type of lollipop, which appeared in an as yet untraced advertisement in a comic book. Although the published source for the photograph of ‘Eve’ has also yet to be traced, the sitter can be identified as the American painter Jo Baer, who posed for nude photographs while she was a struggling artist in New York in the early 1950s.66 Hamilton was not aware of the identity of the model when he affixed the image, taken most probably from a pin-up, or amateur photography, magazine. Complementing Zabo’s posing trunks, fig-leaf nipple tassels had been painted onto the original photograph by the publisher. Similarly, the ‘cloche’, or lampshade, hat is a collaged addition to the original photograph, as the roughly cut-out left side of the sitter’s head shows. Close examination also shows that ‘Eve’ is collaged over the front edge of the sofa, perhaps to avoid her raised right arm obscuring the left eye of the telephoning woman on the television screen. The presence of ‘Eve’ looks forward to many such images in Hamilton’s œuvre. In 1961 he noted that ‘it is the Playboy “Playmate of the month” pull-out pin-up which provides us with the closest contemporary equivalent of the odalisque in painting’. Playboy, launched by Hugh Heffner in December 1953, was the first magazine to combine high production values with risqué pin-up photography – a ‘quintessential emblem of the affluent society’, according to Dominic Sandbrook67 – and stands in contrast to other more saucy, under-the-counter American publications such as those published by Robert Harrison, in particular Beauty Parade which ran from 1952 to 1954. It is from these and other titles such as Cavalcade of Burlesque and Showgirls, or perhaps Amateur Screen and Photography, that the photograph is most likely to have been taken. Four elements of the collage remain to be addressed: the tin of ham, the newspaper, the tape recorder and the rug. The Armour Star tin of ham, placed incongruously on the coffee table, which may be considered as Hamilton’s abbreviated signature, in keeping with the quick-fire language of advertising, is taken from an advertisement that appeared in Look magazine for 20th April 1954 (Fig.29).68 The Journal of Commerce placed on the chair in the foreground was not part of the original Armstrong advertisement, and was thus included by Hamilton to represent the category

‘Newspaper’. ‘Tape recorder (aural information)’ was shown in a similarly straightforward manner by the tape recorder in the foreground, although it is curious that a wind-up model should have been selected when electric machines were more frequently advertised in magazines of the time. According to Hamilton, this and the rug were the final elements added to the collage.69 The model, a ‘Reporter’, can be identified by the barely legible brand name between the reels.70 Reel-to-reel magnetic recording had been pioneered in Germany during the 1930s, but it was only in the late 1940s that the technology was commercially developed in America. In 1956 the tape recorder was still a relatively new invention and was advertised widely in technical and also non-specialist magazines such as Holiday. Formally, the tape recorder brings to mind the Remington typewriter included by Raoul Hausmann in his 1920 collage Dada Siegt (Fig.31), which bears strong similarities to Hamilton’s collage, both formal (e.g. the segment of the Earth on

one of the latest authors to repeat the misidentification of Koszweski; D. Sandbrook: White Heat. A History of Britain in the Swinging Sixties, London 2006, pp.66–67. 64 Richard Hamilton in conversation with the present writer, 25th June 2007. 65 Tomorrow’s Man 2, 9 (September 1954), p.35. 66 Conversation with the present writer, June 2007. This identification is based on likeness and has yet to be substantiated with documentary evidence. Nevertheless,

Jo Baer has identified the photographers as Nat Wilkes and Sidney Wasserman. 67 D. Sandbrook: Never Had it So Good, London 2005, p.620. 68 All source identifications have been corroborated by comparing measurements with the original. 69 Richard Hamilton in conversation with the present writer, 25th June 2007. 70 Many thanks to Stuart Blacklock (EMI archives) for this identification.

30. Irwin ‘Zabo’ Koszewski. Photograph by Bruce Bellas. Reproduced in Tomorrow’s Man (September 1954).

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the ceiling) and thematic (in the connection drawn with America). The reception of Dada and German modernism in general by members of the Independent Group is a rich subject for further research. Alloway’s observation, published just after This is Tomorrow closed, that Dada shows that a work of art ‘may be made of bus tickets or it may look like an advertisement’ points to the importance of this precedent in Hamilton’s and McHale’s work in the 1950s.71 Just what is it . . . introduced the theme of the interior, often containing one or more figures, that has preoccupied Hamilton ever since.72 His own involvement with interior design, notably as a lecturer at the Hugh Casson’s School of Interior Design at the beginning of 1957, was first consolidated around the time of This is Tomorrow.73 But if the intention of Just what is it . . . was to create an image of the future, close analysis of the imagery reveals an equivocal result. None of the source material so far discovered dates from 1956, and elements go back to the beginning of the 1950s (the television design, the wind-up reel-to-reel tape recorder), to 1949 (the Young Romance cover) and to earlier dates (the Warner Cinema in 1927; the Victorian portrait). Hamilton later confirmed this retrospective element, describing his conception of the interior in general as ‘a set of anachronisms, a museum, with the lingering residues of decorative styles that an inhabited space collects’.74 In contrast to the ‘House of the Future’, created by Peter and Alison Smithson for the 1956 Daily Mail Ideal Home exhibition – a space-age residence that ‘crystallized the domestic image of the brutalist sensibility’75 – Hamilton’s interior is more British than American, a ‘cozy little future-world’,76 heir to a genre of English interior scenes reaching back to the eighteenth-century conversation piece. An element not so far identified is the black-and-white speckled rug, whose appearance may have been inspired by the black-and-white rug in the original Armstrong advertisement. It is, however, an enlarged detail of a photographic postcard Hamilton found of the ‘Sands and Promenade’ of Whitley Bay, on the Northumberland coast, probably taken around 1930.77 Falling in between ‘Adam’ and ‘Eve’, this is a very local, unAmerican view of ‘Humanity’. George Orwell wrote that the best indication of the English character could be found on the magazine racks of small newsagent’s shops, where the extent of a nation’s hobbies and pastimes is documented.78 Just what is it . . . reveals how much these pastimes were influenced by American culture in the mid-1950s, but also that the setting for these new pursuits remained on a more modest and domesticated English scale. Whereas many accounts have described the collage as an upto-date image of contemporary life, in fact a strong element of nostalgia is woven into the contemporary setting.

71

L. Alloway: ‘Dada 1956’, Architectural Design 26 (November 1956), p.374. See R. Hamilton: ‘Interiors’, in idem, op. cit. (note 45), pp.61–63; see also exh. cat. Richard Hamilton. Interiors 1964–79, Paris (Galerie Maeght) 1981. 73 Hamilton had earlier taught Basic Design at the Central School of Art in the early 1950s, before developing a similar course at King’s College, University of Durham, Newcastle upon Tyne. 74 Hamilton, op. cit. (note 72), p.62. 75 K. Frampton: ‘New Brutalism and the Welfare State: 1949–59’, in Alloway, op. cit. 72

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31. Dada Siegt, by Raoul Hausmann. 1920. Photomontage and collage with watercolour on paper, 60 by 43 cm. (Private collection).

It may therefore be suggested that underlying the crowded imagery of Just what is it . . . is an anxiety that this new cultural order could not, in fact, be sustained. When it first appeared, as a reproduction in an exhibition catalogue, Britain was in the midst of the Suez crisis, and the long tradition of British imperial dominion and supposed global supremacy appeared irreparably broken. It could well have taken as a title Harold Macmillan’s famous appraisal that Britain had ‘never had it so good’, given in a speech in July 1957, particularly as Macmillan went on to describe the general anxiety that this ‘goodness’ was unsustainable; ‘is it too good to last?’79 Just what is it . . . is a harbinger not only of the iconography of much post-War art, but also reflects the disquiet of its time, marked by the end of Empire and the dawn of the Nuclear Age. True to their story, ‘Adam’ and ‘Eve’ must soon leave this consumer paradise. Viewed in such a context, Hamilton’s little picture seems to say that, in an Age of Boom, things sooner or later must go Pop.

(note 50), p.49. 76 T. Lawson: ‘Bunk: Eduardo Paolozzi and the Legacy of the Independent Group’, in Alloway, op. cit. (note 50), p.25. 77 Hamilton was particularly attracted to photographic, rather than lithographic, postcards, as they could be enlarged without losing resolution. The Whitley Bay postcard was used in a number of subsequent works. 78 G. Orwell: ‘Boys’ Weeklies’, Horizon 3 (March 1940). 79 The Times (22nd July 1957); cited in Sandbrook, op. cit. (note 63), p.80.