Professional Documents
Culture Documents
.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
The MIT Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to October.
http://www.jstor.org
RichardHamilton'sTabular Image
WILLIAM R. KAIZEN
Theefforts
withindustry
in thenineofpoetsto cometo terms
...
are
teenth
that
is
to
unmemorable,
hard-to-learn,
say,
century
in imageforming.The media,however,
whether
uninfluential
with
war
or
the
Mars
or
the
home,
suburbs,are an
dealing
inventoryof pop technology. . . a treasuryof orientation,a
manualofone'soccupancy
ofthetwentieth
century....
-Lawrence Alloway
bethought
... theimageshould,therefore,
ofas tabularas well
as pictorial.
-Richard Hamilton
In a letterfrom 1957 writtento architectsand fellowIndependent Group
membersPeterand AlisonSmithson,RichardHamiltonlistedhis definitionof the
popular arts. He wrote, "Pop art is: Popular (designed for a mass audience),
Transient (short-termsolution), Expendable (easily-forgotten),
Low Cost, Mass
Produced, Young (aimed at youth), Witty,Sexy, Gimmicky,Glamorous, Big
business."lHamilton and the Smithsonshad all recentlycontributedto ThisIs
Theo Crosby'smultidisciplinary,
multimediaexhibitionon art as a culTomorrow,
turalprocess,and were thinkingof workingtogetheron a follow-up.Afterhis list,
Hamilton hesitates:"This isjust a beginning.Perhaps the firstpart of our taskis
the analysisof Pop Art and the production of a table. I find I am not yet sure
about the 'sincerity'of Pop Art."Althoughhe capitalized"pop art,"makingit into
a proper noun and so recognizingmass-producedgoods as a properlydefinable
phenomenon, he was stillunconvincedthat these objects were worthyof serious
attention.He hesitated because, although the IG had been examiningpopular
goods forsome time,he wasstillunsureiftheywereno morethanjust passingfads.
1.
RichardHamilton,Collected
Words1953-1982 (London: Thames and Hudson, 1982), p. 28.
114
OCTOBER
2.
LawrenceAlloway,"Popular Cultureand Pop Art,"in PopArt:A CriticalHistory,
ed. StevenHenry
Madoff(Berkeley:Universityof CaliforniaPress, 1997), pp. 167-68. Established culturalauthorities
disparagedthe influenceof mass-producedculture.The Ministryof Culture,England's governmental
artsagency,supportedcraftand small-scaleproductionfollowingthe lead of WilliamMorrisa
century
before.The fewinstitutionsconcerned withcontemporaryart,such as the Instituteof
Contemporary
Art,upheld the conservativemodernismof HenryMoore.
3.
WithCliffordCollinsand WolfMankowitz.It ran from1946-48.
4.
1780-1950 (New York:Columbia UniversityPress,1983).
RaymondWilliams,Cultureand Society
Williamshad been workingon the book since 1950.
RichardHamilton'sTabularImage
115
5.
RaymondWilliams,TheLongRevolution
(London: Hazell, Watson& Viney,Ltd., 1961). This book
was writtenas a directfollow-upand clarificationof the ideas he proposed in Culture
and Society.
6.
TalkingArt1, ed. AdrianSearle, (London: Instituteof ContemporaryArts,1993) p. 73.
7.
Hamilton describes the IG at this time: "When John McHale visited the U.S. in 1955, he
returnedwitha box full of exotic thingshe had acquired there. He had gone around
buyingMAD
magazine and comics of the most extremekind of lots of pop records.Elvis Presleyand Bill Haley's
"RockAround the Clock" were being heard and discussedat the IndependentGroup before
theywere
even playedon the radio here [in England]. Theywereanalyzedat the ICA and regardedas a
sociological phenomenon, though therewas an admirationand enjoymentof them.So much thatit directed
our interestsintowhatwas going on in the popular arts,otherthan the cinema" (ibid., 74).
p.
116
OCTOBER
8.
9.
10.
OptS
rrk
3W/
-44
rv4v
lis:
low4
4
<*"
44,
RichardHamilton.
Justwhatis itthatmakes
so appealing?
today'shomesso different,
1956.
Hamilton.
Hommagea Chrysler
Corp.1957.
This is the tabular
image, appropriating the
new environment of massproduced imagery,cuttingit
up and then pastiching it
back togetherwithoutcom! i?ii
, ?
!i:i
!~!:i!!i::::
pletely subsuming it in the
(IN
...:
finalconstruction.
........
With the tabular image,
Will!~_iRi\~:
.:::j
Hamilton created a taxonomy of horizontal culture.
Rather than build a classical
w ww'-M,7-,
MM<
taxonomy,wheretheworldis
. : ::ii--ic-'-'-7
7"i
subsumedbya top-to-bottom
hierarchical order, he
common culture
spreads
C,M
."7x,
7gr?3
across the surfaceof the picture, tabulating together
various bits and pieces of
pop imagery. Because the
separate units ofJustwhatis
4MV/,
it... were filteredthrougha
calculated process of selection, it is as if Hamiltonhad
-4"W/
polled the media and
graphed the results.He creates a nonlinear taxonomic
chart of pop culture, a systematic image that can be
and in toto. Each separate unit both maintainsits exisread both point-by-point
tence as individualdatumand becomes a partof the overallfieldthatis the sum
totalof all the data.
AfterJustwhatis it..., Hamiltonreturnedto painting,adapting his collage
tabulationand continuinghis examinationof the effectsof consumercultureon
He createdpaintedcollages thatdepict the resultsof masscultureon
subjectivity.
the horizontal subject. His subject,literallythe figurein his paintings,was the
productof commodification.In the horizontalculturethatHamiltonand the IG
defined, advertisingand leisure goods were quickly coming to dominate the
archiveof formsthroughwhichthe subjectenteredsociety.FollowingWilliams,to
become a memberof societyis to be acculturated,the subject enteringsociety
throughthe adoption of variousformsof cultureone is born into.Since the war,
the culturalarchive had been overrunby commodification.Hamilton's tabular
depicting
paintingspresentedthe processof acculturationas mass-acculturation,
jo,.
:::::
:
~i
:i::?:::?ii
i:i
i !iiiiii
:il
:-?rM?
::ii--g
Hamilton.
$he. 1958-61.
grr
7V
11.
Ibid., p. 104.
"N'
120
OCTOBER
Hommage ...
Hommage
... maintainsa surfaceheterogeneitythatpresentsits lack-its construction as image-openly. The separate units need to be read and understoodboth
as individualunits and as over-allimage. With Hommage... Hamilton wantsthe
image to be "scanned like a poem or a comic book"12ratherthan read all at once
in its entirety.Like a comic book, each frame,or in the case of the tabularpainting, each separate unit, existsboth for itselfand for the overall meaning of the
entirework.
In $he (1958-61), his next tabular painting,Hamilton takes advertisements
forkitchenappliances as the basis of his image. He depicts a woman in a kitchen,
into a
caught in a web of labor-savingdevices,the domesticinteriortransformed
blood
that
around
a
toaster
and
a vacgrotesquerie.Her refrigerator
drips
pools
uum cleaner. Her body is in fragments;her hips and ass rise fromthe canvas in
into a toiletseat. Her one eye is a plastictoythatwinks
plasterrelief,transformed
on and off,a mechanical come-on to viewersas theywalkpast. $heis a pasticheof
biggerand betterappliances,the subjectlost in a void of appliances thatoverflow
theiruse. $he existsas the product of consumeridentity,a Frankensteinianconstructbuiltfromlabor-savingdevices,the branded subjectof consumeridentity.
In "An Exposition of $he," Hamilton elaborated his source material.13He
described each tabularunit comprisingthe paintingnext to reproductionsof the
original advertisementshe used to create the finalimage. As in his essayin the
ThisIs Tomorrow
catalog,he seems to describe the tabularimage itself:
The ad forthe Westinghousevacuum cleaner demonstratesan endearing characteristicof modern visual techniques which I have been at
pains to exploit-the overlappingof presentationstylesand methods.
Photographybecomes diagram, diagram flowsinto text. This casual
adhesion of disparateconventionshas alwaysbeen a factorin mypainting. I want ideas to be explicit and separable, so the plastic entities
mustretain theiridentityas tokens.The elementshold theirintegrity
because theyare voiced in differentplastic dialects with the unified
whole. 14
12.
Ibid. Hamiltonis describingthe workof Paul Klee, whose workhe cites,along with
Duchamp's
LargeGlass,as predecessorsof the tabularimage.
13.
Ibid., pp. 35-38.
14.
Ibid., p. 38.
RichardHamilton'sTabularImage
121
Over the next ten years,Hamilton pursued the tabular image throughseveral series of paintings,each centeredon a different
theme:fashion(both men's
and women's), architecture,cinema, and, in the series SwingeingLondon,the
news.16In 1967 Hamilton'sart dealer,RobertFraser,was arrestedalong withtwo
of the Rolling Stones for drug possession. Because rock stars were involved,the
trialwas extremelypublic and the tabloidshad a fieldday.The bustwas reported
15.
Ibid., p. 269. Even in laterworkwherehe explores the environmentand landscape it is alwaysin
relationshipto the figure.
London67, the entire series consistsof several
16.
AlthoughI will onlydiscuss the printSwingeing
different
printsand a painting.
122
OCTOBER
17.
One of the mostnotoriouslypublicized (and neverproven) partsof the trialwas the
allegation
thatJaggerand hisgirlfriend
were havingsex witha candybar whenthe police bustoccurred.
18.
Again echoing the reproductionofJustwhatis it... as both a posteradvertisingThisIs Tomorrow
and in the exhibitioncatalog.
19.
Released in 1968.
20.
A swingeingmeans,in Britishslang,a harsh punishmentor
stingingrebuke.The edition was of
2,000. Though not huge by commercialstandards,thisis quite large fora fine-artprint. Hamilton's
largestprevious run had been 125. Except for the poster inserthe designed for the Beatles's White
Albumin 1968, whichwas printedin an edition of approximatelyfivemillion,his editions
usuallyran
150 or less.
i!rii
~ ~
Ir4?;
iF?!!
.i:?~
-- -------
'A
TR
WNES
mande
O'A'
J1d
Y1atene
Brianr,
c vat
rdi~lY'*~"
::i-:_AV
w vy:
vA 7/7'
124
OCTOBER
ence of the colors against the descriptions around them. These added colors
become the real-worldpoint that the reportsmisrepresent,and, through mass
disseminationin the tabloids, these misrepresentations
become partof the common culture. They enter into the larger social sphere, becoming part of the
London67,thisarchive
cultural archive that formssubjectiveidentity.In Swingeing
is shownto be foundedon misrepresentation.
London
67 tabulatesthe lack
Swingeing
at the center of the consumersystem,the inabilityof mass formsto account for
individualsubjectivity.
In his description of AndyWarhol's AmbulanceDisaster(1963), Hal Foster
describesthislack as a missedencounterwiththe real: "thesepops, such as a slipping of registeror a washingin color, serve as visual equivalents of our missed
encounters with the real .
21.
22.
Ibid., p. 136.
Hal Foster,TheReturnoftheReal (Cambridge:MIT Press,1996), p. 134.
RichardHamilton'sTabularImage
125
23.
OCTOBER
126
of the reel is used by the child to enact language forthe firsttime. It is the foundational trauma of the mother'sabsence, the tuchiof loss thatpushes the child
into symbolizationand into social life.
The fort-da
game, as the instantiationof language, also marksthe formation
of subjectivity
withinthe child's unconscious.As the child plays,the reel symbolizes the divisionbetweensubjectand object. The alternationbetweenthere (fort!)
and here (da!), comes to define the pulse of the child's subjectivity
as it reaches
out withlanguage and is in turnaffectedbythe language of others.The reel is the
locus of the signifier,
the object thatcomes to definethe subject.In so doing it is
the thingthatforeverlinksthe subjectto the objects of the outsideworld.Coming
between subject and object, unfurledby the subject but presupposingthe existence of the object, the reel is Lacan's object
petita, the thingwhichis both selfand
other,the thingin whichthe twobecome intertwined.
Lacan asks, "Where do we meet this real?"24If the real is what eludes us,
whatexistsbeyond (or before) signification,
past wordsand the possibilityof conscious knowledge,where can it be found?In severalof the seminarsthatfollow,25
Lacan identifiesvision as one possible place where we are touched by the real.
With these seminars, his goal is to ".. . grasp how the tuchiis represented in visual
RichardHamilton'sTabularImage
127
30.
31.
32.
33.
Ibid., p. 106.
Foster,TheReturnoftheReal,p. 140.
F61ixGuattari,SoftSubversions,
ed. SylvireLotringer(NewYork:Semiotext[e],1996), p. 18.
Lacan, FourFundamental
Concepts
ofPsychoanalysis,
p. 106.
128
OCTOBER