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Lot Essay
'{Man] has realized an aspiration which lies deeper than thought, the longing for a power with no natural limits; he finds himself in real life the super-human inhabitant of his dearest fantasy’
(L. Gowing and R. Hamilton, ‘Man, Machine and Motion’, reproduced in Ghosts in the Machine, exh. cat., New Museum, New York, 2012, p. 223).
Created for Richard Hamilton’s seminal 1955 show Man, Machine and Motion, these two works vividly exemplify the artist’s exultation of ‘the devices which man makes to extend his physical potentialities’ (L. Gowing and R. Hamilton, ‘Man, Machine and Motion’, reproduced in Ghosts in the Machine, exh. cat., New Museum, New York, 2012, p. 223). Uniting the functional and the fantastical, the automated and the auratic in a diverse and lyrical thesis on mechanisation, Hamilton was particularly concerned with the documents that recorded these machines in use. Assembling vivid tableaus from a range of primarily photographic material, Hamilton arranged these works into four thematic sections: aquatic, terrestrial, aerial and interplanetary. The present works fall into the latter interplanetary category, paying tribute to the burgeoning possibilities of space travel that had captured the imagination of the generation. Playing with the relationship between human and manmade forms through subtle tonal contrasts, Hamilton explores his conviction that, just as machinery has redefined the scope of human activity, so too can our graphic representations of these functional objects reveal their intrinsic formal beauty.
Originally presented at the Hatton Gallery, Newcastle, and at the Institute of Contemporary Arts later the same year, Man, Machine and Motion was the second exhibition that Hamilton organised as part of the Independent Group, a collective of British artists, architects and critics who met at the ICA in the early 1950s. From this early exploration of the relationship between form and function, Hamilton was to launch his interrogation of mass media imagery that has subsequently been recognised as one of the first Pop art practices in Britain. At the same time, Man, Machine and Motion also looks back to the earlier work of Picabia, Tinguely and Duchamp, whose ironic attempts to conflate the human and mechanical relate to the almost metamorphic forms explored in both panels: human figures become the spokes of a wheel in one, whilst a humanoid space suit takes shape on the reverse of the other. ‘The photographs … discover man in a new relationship’, states the original exhibition catalogue introduction. ‘He has realized an aspiration which lies deeper than thought, the longing for a power with no natural limits; he finds himself in real life the super-human inhabitant of his dearest fantasy’ (L. Gowing and R. Hamilton, ibid.).
(L. Gowing and R. Hamilton, ‘Man, Machine and Motion’, reproduced in Ghosts in the Machine, exh. cat., New Museum, New York, 2012, p. 223).
Created for Richard Hamilton’s seminal 1955 show Man, Machine and Motion, these two works vividly exemplify the artist’s exultation of ‘the devices which man makes to extend his physical potentialities’ (L. Gowing and R. Hamilton, ‘Man, Machine and Motion’, reproduced in Ghosts in the Machine, exh. cat., New Museum, New York, 2012, p. 223). Uniting the functional and the fantastical, the automated and the auratic in a diverse and lyrical thesis on mechanisation, Hamilton was particularly concerned with the documents that recorded these machines in use. Assembling vivid tableaus from a range of primarily photographic material, Hamilton arranged these works into four thematic sections: aquatic, terrestrial, aerial and interplanetary. The present works fall into the latter interplanetary category, paying tribute to the burgeoning possibilities of space travel that had captured the imagination of the generation. Playing with the relationship between human and manmade forms through subtle tonal contrasts, Hamilton explores his conviction that, just as machinery has redefined the scope of human activity, so too can our graphic representations of these functional objects reveal their intrinsic formal beauty.
Originally presented at the Hatton Gallery, Newcastle, and at the Institute of Contemporary Arts later the same year, Man, Machine and Motion was the second exhibition that Hamilton organised as part of the Independent Group, a collective of British artists, architects and critics who met at the ICA in the early 1950s. From this early exploration of the relationship between form and function, Hamilton was to launch his interrogation of mass media imagery that has subsequently been recognised as one of the first Pop art practices in Britain. At the same time, Man, Machine and Motion also looks back to the earlier work of Picabia, Tinguely and Duchamp, whose ironic attempts to conflate the human and mechanical relate to the almost metamorphic forms explored in both panels: human figures become the spokes of a wheel in one, whilst a humanoid space suit takes shape on the reverse of the other. ‘The photographs … discover man in a new relationship’, states the original exhibition catalogue introduction. ‘He has realized an aspiration which lies deeper than thought, the longing for a power with no natural limits; he finds himself in real life the super-human inhabitant of his dearest fantasy’ (L. Gowing and R. Hamilton, ibid.).