Study for $he

Study for $he is a preparatory work by Richard Hamilton for his major Pop Art work, $he, 1958-61 (Tate, London). In this trial layout, which Hamilton worked on throughout 1958, he experimented with the various elements which would eventually make up the finished work. There is a consistency between several details of this study and $he. The visual inspiration for the works came from an American advertisement for a capacious, pink RCA refrigerator. The open door is placed to the right of the composition in the study, with the candy pink subtly indicated by a watercolour wash. The colour was to be stronger in the finished piece. An image of the female glamour model, Vikki Dougan, is another consistent feature. The photograph is taken from an issue of Esquire magazine and the outline of her breasts and lower back is outlined in shaded pencil here and would eventually be outlined in white painted, thin plywood. The image of the toaster in the foreground, with the path of the ejected toast mapped out in dots, is common to both works in outline. This was taken from an advertisement for a General Electric small appliance which Hamilton combined with the hose from another advertisement, this time for a Westinghouse vacuum cleaner. The triangular composition remains the same, but there are some marked differences which show a maturation of the creative process as the artist addressed the imagery of the contemporary admass world. The hair and smile of the model in this version was removed, her face only indicated by a winking eye to represent a more robotic form. The object at the centre of the composition, the rotary device from a washing machine, was removed and there is a vacant space at the centre of the finished work. This is essentially an assemblage of the signs and symbols of contemporary American consumer culture.

Hamilton was experimenting with imagery which he thought encapsulated life in the late 1950s. He wrote a detailed analysis of the work for Architectural Design magazine in 1962, entitled ‘An Exposition of $he’ in which he stated: ‘Contemporary art reacts slowly to the contemporary stylistic scene. How many major works of art have appeared in the twentieth century in which an automobile figures at all? How many feature vacuum cleaners? Not only the mainspring of our twentieth century economy but its most prolific image-maker the automobile industry is well with us, its attitude to form colouring our lives profusely. It adopts its symbols from many fields and contributes to the stylistic language of all consumer goods. It is presented to us by the ad-man in a rounded picture of urban living: a dream world, but the dream is deep and true - the collective desire of a culture translated into an image of fulfilment. Can it be assimilated into the fine art consciousness?’ (R. Hamilton, ‘An exposition of $he’, Architectural Design, October 1962, pp. 485-486).

The confidence to work with such provocative material for a fine art object was inspired and informed by Hamilton’s time with the Independent Group. It met at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London during 1952-55 and Hamilton was a stalwart member. Fellow artists such as Eduardo Paolozzi and John McHale; critics including Lawrence Alloway and Reyner Banham and the architects, Alison and Peter Smithson all adored the rich and vibrant popular culture of America at that time. The Group succeeded in applying a critical framework to advertising, product design, Hollywood film and popular music. Indeed, at this point by ‘Pop Art’ the Independent Group meant popular culture. Members of the group also believed that fine art should be placed along a continuum, on the same level as popular culture, demolishing traditional, cultural hierarchies. The Group shared a common interest in the possibilities of collage, using imagery taken largely from glossy, colour American advertising. John McHale and Eduardo Paolozzi, as well as Hamilton, experimented with this format with notable examples including Just What Is It That Makes Today’s Homes So Different, So Appealing?, 1956, (Zundel Collection, Kunsthalle Tübingen, Germany) by Hamilton, often cited as the first work of Pop Art in the world.

Study For $he builds on this latter work, but is less a superficial collection of images of objects cut out and placed in an imaginary ideal home, and is a more detached and analytical work. The study constitutes a close and serious reading of the visual world using the apparatus of iconography. This resulted in Hamilton experimenting with the deconstruction of the realm of advertising and the visual allure of consumer goods, in an approach inspired by Marcel Duchamp and Surrealism. He succeeded in taking apart and reassembling his chosen imagery to produce a complex and multi-layered work, which teases apart the sophisticated language of advertising. As fellow Independent Group member, Lawrence Alloway, commented in 1962: ‘$he extends the most elliptical sign language of the art world (minted by Marcel Duchamp) to consumer goods. The painting is characterised by the cool, clean hygienic surfaces of kitchen equipment and the detailing has the crisp, fine point of ads or explanatory booklets on the products that Hamilton is painting’ (L. Alloway, ‘Artists as Consumers’, Image, No. 3, 1961, pp. 14-19).

We are very grateful to Professor Anne Massey for preparing this catalogue entry.