Page 61 - Studio International - May 1970

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The idea of writing about the Richard Hamil- greatest emphasis on the emblematic near- Antoine Bourdelle
ton exhibition at the TATE GALLERY and the abstract qualities of popular imagery lifted L'Eloquence (Grande Tete Définitive) 1917
20½ in. high
David Hockney exhibition at the WHITE- out of context. They seemed to care only
7
CHAPEL GALLERY is almost preposterous. On indirectly about the significance of common Antoine Bourdelle
the face of it all they have in common is the objects in their paintings but directly about La Rivière c. 1890
61 in. high
fact that they opened within a few weeks of the manner of presentation. As a result
8
each other, both have been widely praised and American Pop hits you in the eye with all the Antoine Bourdelle
Petit Buste Pathétique 1929
both are likely to be well-attended. But think force of the original. British Pop is by contrast 4 in. high
of the dissimilarities. Hamilton is forty-eight; subdued, literary, if not affectionate in tone.
9
Hockney is thirty-three. Hamilton has spent And no wonder. A Coke bottle, for example, is Antoine Bourdelle
most of his working life unknown to the world a much less familiar object in Britain than it is Beethoven a la Colonne
24 in. high
at large though highly respected by a small in America.
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number of fellow artists. Only recently has his One of the interesting things about seeing David Hockney
work become sought-after and only recently Hockney's work en bloc is that you can see that Early Morning in Ste Maxime 1968-69
Acrylic on canvas
has his pioneering role in art been recognized. over the years he has become much more of a 4 x 5 ft.
Hockney on the other hand was a 'success' Pop artist in the American sense. The water- 11
even before he left art school. He has always shed is undoubtedly his visit to California in David Hockney
Le Parc des Sources, Vichy 1970
been photographed, interviewed and written 1963. Before that his paintings were narrative, Acrylic on canvas
about, and his paintings, drawings and prints anecdotal and graffiti-like in execution. Today 84x 120 in.
have always sold well. they are much cooler, flatter, and dead-pan.
The differences do not stop there. Hamilton's
work seems cerebral, complex, to have many
levels of meaning, to be carefully thought out,
to have a slight dandified finish. Hockney's
works, particularly the early paintings and
prints, seem brash, simple, fresh, personal,
naïve, charming, comic, and full of jeu d'esprit.
Hamilton is witty : Hockney has humour.
People cannot help liking Hockney's work
like they cannot help liking him. Hamilton,
though much more closely associated with Pop
art than Hockney, has not produced such
readily popular work.
Britain, or rather London, is however too
small a place for there to be no connection
between them. Both were in one way affected
by the climate of ideas which sprang from dis-
cussions in and around the ICA in the 1950s
and spread to the Royal College of Art by the
early 1960s. Hamilton was in at the beginning :
Hockney at the end. This climate of ideas was
concerned with the use of figurative imagery
derived from the mass media, from photo-
graphy—interestingly, like Bacon, both Hamil-
ton and Hockney used Muybridge's photo-
graphs as the basis for paintings—from
television and from the big circulation maga-
zines. At the time they would both have been
labelled pop artists but in retrospect neither
artist really had very much to do with Pop as
we now understand it. Hamilton's celebrated
collage, What is it about Today's Homes etc., has
been written about as if it anticipated the
whole Pop movement. It is true that in terms
of subject matter it includes a whole lot of
material which subsequently appeared in pop
paintings five or six years later. But in terms of
content, feeling and technique it harks back
to Schwitters and Dadaism. This collage is as
much behind its times as before it. Similarly
Hockney's painting of a packet of Typhoo tea
is almost in the same spirit as John Bratby's
paintings of packets of cornflakes on his break-
fast table.
American pop artists seemed to have used
familiar everyday imagery in a quite different
spirit. From the start they seemed to place the