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Lot Essay
'One result of a visit to the US in October was to gain a first-hand knowledge of the work of such painters as Warhol, Lichtenstein, Dine, Rosenquist and Oldenburg...Epiphany is a souvenir of America...On my return it stood for much of what I had enjoyed in experiencing the States but it also summed up that which I most admired in American art, its audacity and wit.' (R. Hamilton, quoted in Richard Hamilton: Paintings etc'. 56-64, exh. cat., London, 1964, unpaged)
Epiphany, Richard Hamilton's giant orange and blue painting emblazed with the suggestive words 'Slip it to me', is a singularly iconic work that brilliantly fuses the twin tendencies of 1960s painting (Pop and Op art) while also invoking and paying homage to the two dominant influences on his work: James Joyce and Marcel Duchamp. Alongside the phallic lollipop bearing the word 'Pop' in Just What is it that makes today's homes' so different, so appealing? and which gave 'Pop Art' its name, Epiphany is one of the artist's most famous and memorable images. Deriving from a ready-made image discovered by chance during Hamilton's first visit to America in 1963, its origins lie in an extraordinarily fitting and even perhaps auspicious moment of synchronicity.
Hamilton had traveled to the U.S. for the first time in 1963 at the invitation of Marcel Duchamp to see the work of the great French artist at his first retrospective exhibition held at the Pasadena Museum of Art. During his stay, Irving Blum, the young dealer who ran the Ferus Gallery (the gallery that at this time was establishing itself as the West Coast home of 'Pop' art), took Hamilton to a 'seedy joke shop' in Pacific Ocean Park. It was in this shop that Hamilton discovered the 'Slip it to Me' lapel badge that was to inspire this work and underwent his moment of 'epiphany'.
The simple suggestive phrase 'Slip It To Me' on the badge immediately spoke to Hamilton of the 'audacity and wit' he so admired in American art. Its bold complimentary colouring also perhaps recalled for him the optical radiance of Duchamp's 1936 Fluttering Hearts design used for the cover of Cahiers d'Art at the same time that its stylishly open juxtaposition of word, typeface and colour, clearly echoes the exploitation of the 'Pop' sensibility towards signage then being pioneered by Ed Ruscha.
On his return to London, Hamilton replicated the badge as a vast one metre diameter wooden painted disc which was to be used as a leading image for his first major exhibition of paintings at the Hanover Gallery in 1964. As if to reiterate its intercontinental fusion of Pop, Op and Duchampian motifs, Hamilton even had himself photographed holding his new work next to a replica of a Lichtenstein and Duchamp's Bicycle wheel for the cover of the exhibition catalogue. He entitled it Epiphany in homage to his great mentor James Joyce's use of the term. 'The dictionary defines the word "epiphany" as a manifestation or appearance of some divine or superhuman being', Hamilton later wrote. 'Joyce used a broader and far more beautiful description of the experience he called an epiphany; it was the revelation of the whatness of a thing: the moment in which the "soul of the commonest object seems to us radiant." Some thing or some experience, could bring about this instant of understanding. I sometimes wonder if a sudden epiphany hit Marcel Duchamp when he picked up a bicycle wheel and put it through a hole in the top of a kitchen stool in 1913. I experienced such a moment of understanding when I encountered a large button in a seedy gift shop in Pacific Ocean Park, Venice, California, with the words 'SLIP IT TO ME' blatantly displayed across it. The greatly enlarged version of the badge which I characterized as a work of art was entitled Epiphany'. (R. Hamilton, quoted in Imaging James Joyce's Ulysses: Richard Hamilton Illustrations to James Joyces Ulysses 1948-1998, exh. cat., London, 2002, pp. 99-100).
Hamilton's initial aim with Epiphany had been to replicate the original badge more accurately in painted aluminium, but at the time he had settled upon a wood version when aluminium had proved prohibitively expensive. In 1989, when production costs had reduced to make the project viable, Hamilton had Epiphany manufactured in a multiple edition of twelve. Part painting, part ready-made, part hanging sculpture, the work remains a timely and fitting icon of Hamilton's multivalent and enduring aesthetic.
Epiphany, Richard Hamilton's giant orange and blue painting emblazed with the suggestive words 'Slip it to me', is a singularly iconic work that brilliantly fuses the twin tendencies of 1960s painting (Pop and Op art) while also invoking and paying homage to the two dominant influences on his work: James Joyce and Marcel Duchamp. Alongside the phallic lollipop bearing the word 'Pop' in Just What is it that makes today's homes' so different, so appealing? and which gave 'Pop Art' its name, Epiphany is one of the artist's most famous and memorable images. Deriving from a ready-made image discovered by chance during Hamilton's first visit to America in 1963, its origins lie in an extraordinarily fitting and even perhaps auspicious moment of synchronicity.
Hamilton had traveled to the U.S. for the first time in 1963 at the invitation of Marcel Duchamp to see the work of the great French artist at his first retrospective exhibition held at the Pasadena Museum of Art. During his stay, Irving Blum, the young dealer who ran the Ferus Gallery (the gallery that at this time was establishing itself as the West Coast home of 'Pop' art), took Hamilton to a 'seedy joke shop' in Pacific Ocean Park. It was in this shop that Hamilton discovered the 'Slip it to Me' lapel badge that was to inspire this work and underwent his moment of 'epiphany'.
The simple suggestive phrase 'Slip It To Me' on the badge immediately spoke to Hamilton of the 'audacity and wit' he so admired in American art. Its bold complimentary colouring also perhaps recalled for him the optical radiance of Duchamp's 1936 Fluttering Hearts design used for the cover of Cahiers d'Art at the same time that its stylishly open juxtaposition of word, typeface and colour, clearly echoes the exploitation of the 'Pop' sensibility towards signage then being pioneered by Ed Ruscha.
On his return to London, Hamilton replicated the badge as a vast one metre diameter wooden painted disc which was to be used as a leading image for his first major exhibition of paintings at the Hanover Gallery in 1964. As if to reiterate its intercontinental fusion of Pop, Op and Duchampian motifs, Hamilton even had himself photographed holding his new work next to a replica of a Lichtenstein and Duchamp's Bicycle wheel for the cover of the exhibition catalogue. He entitled it Epiphany in homage to his great mentor James Joyce's use of the term. 'The dictionary defines the word "epiphany" as a manifestation or appearance of some divine or superhuman being', Hamilton later wrote. 'Joyce used a broader and far more beautiful description of the experience he called an epiphany; it was the revelation of the whatness of a thing: the moment in which the "soul of the commonest object seems to us radiant." Some thing or some experience, could bring about this instant of understanding. I sometimes wonder if a sudden epiphany hit Marcel Duchamp when he picked up a bicycle wheel and put it through a hole in the top of a kitchen stool in 1913. I experienced such a moment of understanding when I encountered a large button in a seedy gift shop in Pacific Ocean Park, Venice, California, with the words 'SLIP IT TO ME' blatantly displayed across it. The greatly enlarged version of the badge which I characterized as a work of art was entitled Epiphany'. (R. Hamilton, quoted in Imaging James Joyce's Ulysses: Richard Hamilton Illustrations to James Joyces Ulysses 1948-1998, exh. cat., London, 2002, pp. 99-100).
Hamilton's initial aim with Epiphany had been to replicate the original badge more accurately in painted aluminium, but at the time he had settled upon a wood version when aluminium had proved prohibitively expensive. In 1989, when production costs had reduced to make the project viable, Hamilton had Epiphany manufactured in a multiple edition of twelve. Part painting, part ready-made, part hanging sculpture, the work remains a timely and fitting icon of Hamilton's multivalent and enduring aesthetic.