Pop in the Age of Boom: Richard Hamilton’s ‘Just what is ... · PDF fileMEASURING BARELY ONE FOOTsquare, Richard Hamilton’s Just what is it that makes today’s homes so different,

MEASURING BARELY ONE FOOT square, Richard Hamilton’sJust what is it that makes today’s homes so different, so appealing?is one of the most celebrated images in twentieth-centuryBritish art (Figs.14 and 15). It was created for the catalogueand used for one of the posters for the exhibition This isTomorrow held at the Whitechapel Art Gallery, London, dur-ing August and September 1956. Collaged with images drawnchiefly from American illustrated magazines, it has become an emblem of the Age of Boom, the post-War consumer culture of the late 1950s.1 It has also become a manifesto for a movement. In one of the first accounts of British Pop art,published in 1963, it was presented as a catalytic work, and thenext year was decreed ‘the first genuine work of Pop’.2 Morerecently it has been compared with the Demoiselles d’Avignon,has been hailed as ‘the starting point of planetary Pop Art’ andas the ‘perfect Pop work’.3 John Russell’s description overthirty years ago of the endless ‘pockets of meaning’ that can befound in ‘this little picture’ remains true today.4 Above all, itwas a startling prognosis of the use of comic books, tinnedfood and burlesque nudes that formed the iconography of Popart, and of the widespread use by artists of the metonymiclanguage of advertising. Such a mythic status is all the moreremarkable for an object not originally intended for displaybut as a design for lithographic reproduction.5 Despite this

fame, however, the immediate origins of Hamilton’s collagehave remained obscure. The new archival and source materialpresented in this article sheds light on these origins, address-ing problems surrounding the authorship of the work. Newlyidentified sources for various parts of the collage allow for arevised interpretation of its contents.

The background of and preparations for the historic exhibition This is Tomorrow are well known. In a context of enthusiasm for cross-disciplinary exhibitions of Con-structivist-inspired art and architecture,6 a group of youngartists, architects and critics met during early 1955 in the studioof the painter Adrian Heath and decided, after heated debate,on the basic format of their as yet untitled exhibition.7 TheoCrosby, who was at that moment the editor of ArchitecturalDesign, headed the organisation committee. Eleven teams ofthree or four individuals were formed, each with the task ofconstructing a display for the exhibition, which was to open on9th August the following year. Crosby approached BryanRobertson, the director of the Whitechapel Art Gallery, whoagreed to host the exhibition. The budget was minimal and, as preparations got underway, it was decided that each teamwould design and print a poster and contribute six pages to the catalogue (Fig.16). Each was also required to subsidise thematerials for its displays. From the outset the intentions were

For their help in the preparation of this article, I would like to thank Jo Baer, Mary Banham, Stuart Blacklock (EMI Archive), Robert Cooper, Magda CordellMcHale, Rita Donagh, Gerlinde Engelhardt (Kunsthalle Tübingen), Elisabeth Fair-man (Yale Center for British Art, New Haven), Tim Fogerty (Muscle Memory),Mark Francis, Adrian Glew (Tate Archive), Graphic Imaging Technology, Brook-lyn, New York, Richard Hamilton, Rod Hamilton, Dian Hanson, Martin Harrison,Richard Hollis, Randolphe Hoppe (Jack Kirby Museum), Harry Mendryk, JohnMcHale Jr., Richard Morphet, Petra Cerne Oven (University of Reading Depart-ment of Typography), Randall Scott (Michigan State University Libraries), PosySimmonds, Candy Stobbs (Whitechapel Art Gallery), Aurélie Verdier and AnnaYandell. Particular thanks go to Richard Hamilton for permission to cite from lettersin his archive, and to the Gagosian Gallery, London.1 The phrase was first used in Queen, 15th September 1959.2 J. Reichardt: ‘Pop Art and After’, Art International 7, 2 (25th February 1963)pp.42–47, esp. p.43; M. Amaya: Pop as Art. A Survey of the New Super Realism, London 1965, p.32.3 W. Guadagnini: ‘Coincidences’, in M. Livingstone and W. Guadagnini, eds.: exh.cat. Pop Art UK. British Pop Art 1956–1972, Modena (Palazzo Santa Margherita;Palazzina dei Giardini) 2004, pp.37–41, esp. p.37.4 J. Russell: ‘Introduction’, in exh. cat. Richard Hamilton, New York (Solomon R.Guggenheim Museum) 1973, pp.10–11.5 The collage was first displayed as a work of art, while still in the collection of theartist, in the exhibition Nieuwe Realisten at the Gemeentemuseum, The Hague (24thJune to 30th August 1964), the catalogue to which included a reprint of JasiaReichardt’s essay, cited at note 2 above, and a large reproduction. It was to a certainextent owing to the enthusiasm of the curator and writer Walter Hopps that thecollage acquired an independent life: he possessed a colour slide of the work whichhe used in lectures in the late 1950s, and it was through his agency that the work wassold, on the occasion of Hamilton’s exhibition at the Hanover Gallery, London

(20th October to 20th November 1964), to the American collector Ed Janss, in 1964, for £320; London, Tate Gallery Archive (hereafter cited as TGA)863/Hanover Gallery. The collage was to have been displayed in the exhibition Euro-pean drawings (Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 1966), organised byLawrence Alloway. Alloway had written to Hamilton asking for four drawings thathad been displayed in Hamilton’s 1964 Hanover Gallery exhibition, but rejectedHamilton’s subsequent suggestion that Just what is it . . . should be included; L.Alloway to R. Hamilton, 26th July 1965, Richard Hamilton archive (cited hereafteras RHA). It was then displayed in the exhibitions Pop Art, London (Hayward Gallery)1969; Richard Hamilton, London (Tate Gallery), Eindhoven (Stedelijk van Abbe-museum) and Bern (Kunsthalle) 1970; and Richard Hamilton, New York (Solomon R.Guggenheim Museum) 1973. The collage was sold on 20th August 1974 to the German collector Georg Zundel, and simultaneously became part of the collectionof the Kunsthalle Tübingen. Thereafter, it was shown in the exhibitions: RichardHamilton Studies – Studien 1937–1977, Bielefeld (Kunsthalle), Tübingen (Kunsthalle)and Göttingen (Kunstverein) 1978; Westkunst: zeitgenössische Kunst seit 1939, Cologne(Messegelände, Rheinhallen) 1981; Modern dreams. The rise and fall of Pop, New York(Clocktower Gallery) 1987; and High & low: modern art and popular culture, New York(Museum of Modern Art), Chicago (Art Institute) and Los Angeles (Museum ofContemporary Art) 1990–91. A photograph taken by Hamilton at the time of the1987 Clocktower Gallery exhibition has been substituted for the original collage in anumber of subsequent exhibitions. 6 A. Fowler: ‘A forgotten British Constructivist group: the London branch ofGroupe Espace, 1953–59’, THE BURLINGTON MAGAZINE 148 (2007), pp.173–79.7 D. Robbins, ed.: exh. cat. The Independent Group: Postwar Britain and the Aestheticsof Plenty, Hanover (Hood Museum of Art), London (ICA), Los Angeles (Museumof Contemporary Art) and Berkeley (University Art Museum) 1990–91, pp.30 and135–36.

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Pop in the Age of Boom: Richard Hamilton’s ‘Just what is it that makes today’s homes so different, so appealing?’by JOHN-PAUL STONARD

608 september 2007 • cxlix • the burlington magazine

15. Catalogue for the exhibition This isTomorrow, Whitechapel Art Gallery, 1956, showingtwo-page spread designedby Richard Hamilton,including the collage Just what is it . . ..

P O P I N T H E A G E O F B O O M

vague – an exhibition of the most forward-looking tendencies,engaging directly with the contemporary world. Although thisimpulse arose in part from the dynamic think-tank atmosphereof the Independent Group at the Institute of ContemporaryArts, the exhibition was for the most part defined by contem-porary British attitudes to Constructivism. Both constituentswere founded on ideas that enabled cross-disciplinary discus-sion between architects, artists and philosophers.

Among the eleven teams, Group Two comprised the architect John Voelcker and the Independent Group mem-bers John McHale and Richard Hamilton. Also important forGroup Two’s contribution were Terry Hamilton (Hamilton’swife), the Hungarian painter Magda Cordell and her husband,Frank Cordell, a musical director at EMI. Anne Massey hasrecounted how the Cordells, McHale and Lawrence Allowayformed a caucus within the Independent Group.8 AlthoughVoelcker played an important role, the combined interests of McHale and Hamilton largely determined Group Two’scontribution. McHale and Alloway had taken over con-venorship of the Independent Group towards the end of 1954 and reoriented its discussions towards American popularculture, advertising, Hollywood cinema and science fiction.9Members gave talks on their particular interests, including an influential address by Reyner Banham on car styling.10

Hamilton’s contribution dealt with American domestic appli-ances: ‘I was fascinated by “white goods” as they were called,washing machines and dishwashers and refrigerators – notsimply as objects in themselves as designed objects, but also inthe ways in which they were presented to the audience’.11

Eduardo Paolozzi’s use of advertising images from Americanmagazines was formative and fed into a general and collabo-rative interest in such material. ‘Tear sheets’ of advertisingimages were passed around, and ‘tackboards’ of assorted adver-tising imagery were common in artists’ studios and homes.12

Hamilton has described the enthusiasm with which GroupTwo began preparations for the exhibition and the impor-tance of the interest he and McHale shared in ‘Pop Art, pop music, cinema and all the other things you see in a listwhen Pop Art is mentioned’.13 Group Two was unique inconceiving its contribution as a distillation of the ideas developed in the Independent Group – before it ceased tofunction in spring 1955. As it turned out, their show-stealingdisplay, an ‘ebullient carnival piece’ according to Alloway,was dramatically different from any other stand.14 Thethemes of optical illusion and popular culture were combinedin a display surrounding a ‘fun-house’ structure which incor-porated a jukebox. The eventual success of their contributionfollowed severe difficulties that arose during the period of preparation. In August 1955, after a few preliminary

discussions, McHale left for a period of study at the YaleSchool of Fine Art, New Haven, returning only at the end of May 1956. ‘We could only correspond by letter’, Hamiltonremembered, ‘and their tone became increasingly acrimo-nious. Finally, we were no longer friends’.15

Those letters that have survived from the correspondenceshed light on the evolution of the collage and offer someclarification of its recently contested attribution and status as a collaborative work. The focus of this contention is thetrunk of American ephemera – magazines, advertisementsand records – collected by McHale during his stay in NewHaven which were used by Hamilton, at least in part, for the construction of the collage. It has been suggested thatthis implies a collaboration and that McHale may even havesupplied a design.16

Of all the members of the Independent Group, McHaleappears at that moment as the one most engaged with the collage medium, American advertising and the impact of new domestic technical appliances. His interest in American

8 A. Massey: The Independent Group. Modernism and Mass Culture in Britain 1945–59,Manchester and New York 1995, p.79.9 Ibid., pp.77–93.10 ‘Borax, or the Thousand Horse-Power Mink’ was given on 4th March 1955. 11 ‘Richard Hamilton in conversation with Michael Craig-Martin’, in A. Searle:Talking Art 1, London 1993, pp.67–83, esp. p.73.12 B. Colomina: ‘Friends of the Future: A Conversation with Peter Smithson’, October 94 (2000), pp.3–30, esp. p.9.13 R. Hamilton: ‘Pop Daddy’, Tate Magazine 4 (March/April 2003), pp.60–62.

14 L. Alloway: ‘The Development of British Pop’, in L. Lippard, ed.: Pop Art, London 1966, pp.27–67, esp. p.39.15 Hamilton, op. cit. (note 13), p.62.16 The standard attribution is given by Massey, op. cit. (note 8), p.118: ‘A collagedrawn from American mass media sources, mainly supplied by John McHale as a result of his visit to Yale’. A more recent controversy concerning the authorship ofthe collage was summarised by Jeremy Hunt in his article ‘This is Tomorrow1956–2006’, State of Art (September/October 2006), pp.24–25. The debate has continued on the website Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.org).

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14. Just what is it that makestoday’s home so different, soappealing?, by RichardHamilton. 1956. Collage ofprinted materials andgouache, 25.7 by 24.5 cm.(Kunsthalle Tübingen,Sammlung Zundel).

16. ‘12 Posters for This is Tomorrow’, reproduced in Architectural Design (September1956), p.304. Included are the posters designed by John McHale (top row, secondfrom left) and Richard Hamilton (top row, third from left) for Group Two.

Tomorrow, as well as McHale’s own wide interests. Writing at the beginning of November 1955, McHale describes theexcitement of studying in the Yale School of Fine Art with such luminaries as Norman Ives, Herbert Matter and,above all, Josef Albers as faculty members.27 The interests heexpresses in this and subsequent letters are largely concernedwith perception, visual illusions and science fiction. ‘Mainkick now is perception via [Adelbert] Ames etc coupled withJoe’s [Josef Albers] field of colour vibration’. McHale’s dis-tance from the evolving organisation of the exhibition, aproblem compounded by the wait required for airmail, isshown in a letter sent around mid-January in which he asksRichard and Terry Hamilton if the space allocated to thenewly formed Group Twelve of Alloway, Toni del Renzioand Geoffrey Holroyd would reduce the space allocated toGroup Two.28 He also refers to the ‘New Haven version ofthe I.G.’, which ‘flourishes or rather did flourish last term . . .’.

In London pressure was beginning to mount for Hamil-ton and Voelcker to finalise details for Group Two’s contribution, in particular for the poster and the cataloguewhich were due on 1st May. Voelcker sent details ofrequirements for the catalogue and poster to both Hamiltonand McHale in mid-February, following a meeting of the organising committee that he had attended two days earlier.29 At this meeting the designer Edward Wright hadpresented a mock-up of the catalogue, and the amount of pages allocated to each group was decided.30 Wright wasalso to design the posters, and the requirements for eachgroup were similarly confirmed.

The deadline was emphasised by Hamilton in a letter toMcHale towards the end of March, indicating that McHale

had been out of touch: ‘Had hoped to hear from you by nowre clump’ (‘clump’ was the term used by Group Two to referto the individual teams).31 The content of Group Two’scontribution had yet to be finalised, Hamilton requestingsuggestions and material from McHale, and adding: ‘You cansee that it is imperative that one or the other of us starts on thisvery very soon so do let me know your view immediately’.Hamilton signed off: ‘I shall be seeing Magda next week I presume and she, no doubt, will have information as to thedate of your return’. Magda Cordell, who was having an affairwith McHale (for whom she eventually left Frank Cordell),visited him in New Haven from the beginning of February toaround mid- to late March. On 18th March Voelcker hadinformed the Hamiltons by letter that McHale was to sendmaterial for the catalogue ‘with Magda when she returns’. Ataround the same time, McHale wrote to Hamilton agreeingto design the poster, but requesting that Hamilton execute his design in England.32 He also confirmed that his materialsand commentary would reach Hamilton via Magda who was returning from her visit to New Haven: ‘In the next two days following this you will have my notes on structureof John V. [the central display of the Group Two space], catalogue, comments, suggestions for images etc. etc’. Thesematerials were accompanied by a letter and a mock-up for thecatalogue, sent to the Cordells’ flat in Cleveland Square,Paddington, where McHale also kept a studio.33 Notes and amock-up of the layout for the catalogue by McHale (Fig.19)accompanying this letter made clear his attitude towards thecatalogue as largely visual–scientific, suggesting pictorial useof the equation E =MC 2, and also the standard diagram of‘sense extension’, derived from a book by E.W. Meyers, a

world of infra-grilled steak, pre-mixed cake, dream-kitchens, dream-cars, machine-tools, power-mixers, parkways, harbours, ticker-tape, spark-plugs and electronics’;The Architectural Review 121, 7 (24th May 1957), p.293.25 Alloway, op. cit. (note 14), p.35.26 ‘Shoe-Life Stories McHale no.2A’; YCBA.27 John McHale to Richard and Terry Hamilton, 15th November 1955; RHA.28 John McHale to Richard and Terry Hamilton, undated (after 5th January 1956);RHA.29 John Voelcker to Richard and Terry Hamilton, 16th February 1956 (copy sent toJohn McHale); RHA.

30 Edward Wright (1912–88) taught an experimental typography workshop at theCentral School of Art from 1950 to 1955, and then taught at the Royal College of Art.He was an influential figure in the use of modernist typography and graphic design.31 Richard Hamilton to John McHale, undated letter (mid- to late March 1956);RHA.32 John McHale to Richard Hamilton, undated letter (mid-March 1956); RHA.33 The letter can be dated by McHale’s reference to the fact that it was written during the spring recess of the Yale School of Fine Art (21st March to 1st April). For these and all subsequent term dates, see Bulletin of Yale University. University catalogue number for the year 1955–1956, New Haven 1955.


18. Shoe-Life Stories, by John McHale. c.1955. Double-page spread from collage book, mixed media,

25.1 by 41.5 cm. (John McHale archive, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven).


magazines can be seen from his collection of ‘tear sheets’ frommagazines reaching back as far as 1931.17 It is clear that he wasa pivotal figure for that small number of British intellectualswho took American popular culture seriously, but his lateremigration to the United States has meant that his contri-bution has been somewhat overlooked. Hamilton himselflater recorded that ‘John McHale’s catholic intellect applieditself with presbyterial rigour to everything and generouslydistributed the fruits of his enquiry to the flock. When hisbumper bundle from a first visit to the United States was ceremonially presented at the ICA, the first Elvis Presleyrecords to land on these shores were protectively interleavedwith copies of MAD magazine so that no one knew what wasballast and what cargo’.18 The German art historian JürgenJacobs has suggested that McHale’s Independent Group lecture ‘Technology at Home’ influenced Hamilton’s deci-sion to include an image of a woman vacuuming.19 In hisfamous letter to Peter and Alison Smithson, which providedone of the first definitions of Pop culture, Hamilton enumer-ates those events of the ‘post war years’ which he felt wereimportant, listing McHale’s ‘Ad image research’ alongside the work of Paolozzi and the Smithsons.20

Furthermore, McHale was one of the leading exponents ofcollage within the ICA milieu. His works were included inthe exhibition Collages and Objects, organised by Alloway anddesigned by McHale himself, held at the ICA during Octoberand November 1954. This important exhibition showedworks by Picasso, Braque, Schwitters and others alongsidecollages by members of the Independent Group, principallyPaolozzi and Nigel Henderson. Significantly, Hamilton wasnot involved. The press release for the exhibition describes itas part of the ‘collage revival’ in post-War Britain.21 A furtherexhibition of eleven collages by McHale was held in thelibrary of the ICA shortly after This is Tomorrow closed. In hisshort catalogue introduction to the exhibition, Allowaycompares McHale’s collages to those of Schwitters and Ernstand also draws attention to McHale’s interest in Americanmagazines, particularly their advertisements for food, with‘visions of popular appetite, chocolate landscape cake, saladsculpture, solid-gold chicken’.22

The types of collage McHale was making at this momentshow nevertheless the influence of abstraction rather than ofthe naturalistic space used in Just what is it . . .. As Banhampointed out, McHale’s clear interest on his return from America was to ‘produce a mechanistic figure’, in particularthat of a robot.23 His Machine made America II (Fig.17) designedfor the front cover of Architectural Review (24th May 1957) was typical of this kind of work, showing the influence of ArtBrut mixed with an interest in robotics, science fiction and

food advertisements.24 The collages he exhibited in the ICAlibrary in 1955 depended, Alloway wrote, on a ‘capaciousDubuffetesque human contour’, and appeared ‘democrati-cally Arcimboldesque’.25 Alongside this abstract manner,other works are based on typographic photomontage. Hismost innovative works in the medium are his collage books,for instance Shoe-Life Stories, made after April 1955, whichuse varying page sizes and other devices to create constantlychanging juxtapositions of images drawn from magazinesand newspapers, in particular headlines and other cut-outtext (Fig.18).26 Together with two other books made aroundthe same time, Shoe-Life Stories has yet to receive the criticalattention it deserves.

Banham’s and Alloway’s comments are borne out by the content of letters from McHale to Richard and TerryHamilton sent from America during late 1955 and early 1956.These further illuminate the intellectual background to This is

17 This collection is now in the archive of the Yale Center for British Art, NewHaven (hereafter cited as YCBA).18 C. Kotic, J. McHale, L. Alloway, R. Banham and R. Hamilton: exh. cat. TheExpendable Ikon: Works by John McHale, Buffalo (Albright-Knox Art Gallery) 1984, p.47. 19 J. Jacobs: Die Entwicklung der Pop Art in England von ihren Anfängen bis 1957, Frankfurt 1986, p.90; J. McHale: ‘Technology in the Home’, Ark 19, (March 1957),pp.24–27.20 Richard Hamilton to Peter and Alison Smithson, 16th January 1957 (RHA).The seminal statement of McHale’s ideas was contained in two articles: ‘Theexpendable ikon 1’, Architectural Design 29 (February 1959), and ‘The expendable

ikon 2’, ibid. (March 1959). 21 Press release for Collages and Objects, dated 8th October 1954; TGA, 955.1.12.612/32. 22 L. Alloway: ‘Introduction’, exh. cat. John McHale Collages, London (ICA) 1956.23 Kotic et al., op. cit. (note 18), p.40.24 A comment on the image appeared on the colophon page: ‘The cover personage,by John McHale, with the tetragram of power – Neutral, Drive, Low, Reverse –graven on his heart, was assembled from typical fragments of the cultural complex healso symbolizes; Machine Made America. The source of the material was one ofAmerica’s favourite flattering mirrors, coloured magazine illustrations, and reflects a


17. Machine made America II, by John McHale. 1956. Cover for ArchitecturalReview (24th May 1957).


Command of 1948, which reprinted numerous contemporaryadvertisements, including a satire on the ‘Overgadgetedkitchen’.38 Although no material from the magazine was usedin Just what is it . . ., the indirect influence of MAD suggestsa more ironic take on advertising culture than has previouslybeen ascribed to the collage.

McHale’s grudging acceptance of the ‘crazy collagist’approach suggests that he too may have wished for a moreserious approach both to the catalogue and the exhibition, thetype of earnest constructivism that characterised many of the other This is Tomorrow collaborations. Following on fromhis exasperated response to Hamilton’s apparent change ofapproach, he noted: ‘Fine – I include some you may use’. Thismay well indicate that McHale sent tear sheets or cut-outs tobe used for the collage at this point, which would have arrivedbefore the deadline of 1st May. In response to McHale’s letter, Terry Hamilton wrote an angry reply, dated 1st May,pointing out that it was McHale rather than Hamilton whohad ‘gone all highbrow’ and rejected the idea of collage,rather than vice versa, and also that ‘Richard has been hard atit getting the thing produced’.39 Interestingly, she goes on todescribe the collage as ‘rationalised mad – a room containingcategories on the list Richard sent you earlier’.

To what extent the material McHale included in his letter,or material from the trunk, was used for Hamilton’s collage isstill open to question, and is dealt with in more detail in theindividual cases discussed below. American publications werewidely available in London, and had been collected by andexchanged among artists for a number of years. Referring to eye-witness accounts, John Russell has described the ‘collective delight’ with which British artists greeted suchAmericana: ‘Painters pounced on the advertising pages ofMcCall’s Magazine the way Dyce pounced on Raphael whenhe was asked to paint a Madonna’.40 Hamilton has describedthe importance of his visits with Henderson and Paolozzi tothe reading room of the American Embassy in GrosvenorSquare, London, where the latest magazines were available,and direct comparisons could be made between English andAmerican publications: ‘There was Picture Post, but that didn’thave the glamour of Life magazine in the post-war years’,Hamilton later recalled.41 An exhibition of photographs fromLife magazine held at the ICA in early 1952 attests not only tothe importance but the availability of the title in London.42

International editions of certain publications were also avail-able, as Paolozzi’s 1952 collage Keep it simple, keep it sexy, keep it sad demonstrated, showing the front of the ‘AtlanticOverseas Edition’ of TIME, The Weekly Newsmagazine. Forhis use of popular imagery drawn from magazines and comics,Paolozzi is one of the most prominent forerunners of Just what is it . . .. The 1948 collage from his ‘Bunk’ series, It’s

a psychological fact pleasure helps your disposition, used the April1947 issue of the Ladies’ Home Journal; other collages showcomics such as Hi-Ho and Breezy Stories. American comicswere widely available in London, as can be seen from Hen-derson’s photograph taken around 1950 (Fig.20) of an EastEnd shop front, displaying the sign ‘Stop! Here for AmericanComics. Biggest selection in East London’. Other well-known outlets for comics and magazines were the newsagentsS. Solosy Ltd., in the Charing Cross Road, and Moroni’snews-stand in Old Compton Street. News-stand displays ofmagazines were themselves an object of fascination, offering asudden frieze of saturated colour to the post-War flâneur.43

Further source material may have been found in the flat ofFrank and Magda Cordell at 52 Cleveland Square, whereHamilton made the collage with the assistance of TerryHamilton and Magda Cordell, recently returned from America. According to Hamilton, the collage was producedin a single morning, after Hamilton had provided Terry andMagda with a list of the things that he wanted the collage torepresent, and they retrieved them from the magazines avail-able in the flat.44 Hamilton’s iconographic prescription showsthe dual interest in science and popular culture that hadmarked the Independent Group: ‘Man, Woman, Humanity,History, Food, Newspaper, Cinema, TV, Telephone,Comics (picture information), Words (textual information),Tape recording (aural information), Cars, Domestic appli-ances, Space’.45 Terry’s and Magda’s assistance was clearlyimportant in determining the choice of imagery for the collage; such a modus operandi was entirely in keeping withthe division of domestic labour that so fascinated Hamilton inthe advertising material of the day.46 Whereas later works by

955/1/12/37. A further exhibition at the ICA during September 1956, concurrentwith This is Tomorrow at the Whitechapel, displayed cartoons from the New Yorkermagazine by artists such as James Thurber and Saul Steinberg. It was organised by theAmerican Federation of Arts and travelled to Manchester, Edinburgh and Belfast;TGA 955.1.12.80.43 Particular thanks to Magda Cordell McHale for information on this topic; conversation with the present writer, 4th July 2007.44 Richard Hamilton in conversation with the present writer, 7th February 2007.45 The list is reprinted in R. Hamilton: Collected Words 1953–1982, London 1982,p.24. There is no copy of this list in Hamilton’s personal archive. Hamilton was

clearly fond of tabulating imagery in this manner, producing similar lists of ‘Imagery’and ‘Perception’ for the Group Two display at This is Tomorrow, and also in the letter addressed to the Smithsons in January 1957, often taken as a manifesto for Popart in Britain. Copies of these lists can be found in Hamilton’s personal archive andare cited in ibid., pp.22 and 28.46 For the association of mass culture with femininity and its uncritical reflection in the work of many Pop artists, see C. Whiting: A Taste for Pop. Pop Art, Genderand Consumer Culture, Cambridge 1997, which contains a full bibliography of thissubject.


20. Photograph of an East End shop front, by Nigel Henderson. 1949–53. Reproduced in V. Walsh: Nigel Henderson. Parallel of Life and Art, London 2001, p.52.


British expert on cybernetics who had given an address to the Independent Group in March 1955 on the theme of‘Probability and Information Theory and Their Applicationto the Visual Arts’.34 His suggestions for the remaining pageswere generalised combinations of text and symbols ‘toapproximate [the] human image’. Apart from his preoccu-pation with perception and visual illusion, the only referenceto popular advertising material was the possibility of using‘very big posters or billboards which when cut down mayprovide images’, giving Baked Beans posters as a suggestion,and also material culled from science fiction sources. Despitethis, McHale’s ideas for This is Tomorrow were defined by scientific diagrams rather than photography – ‘at the moment

for this exhibition I am off the direct photo-image’, he writesin the same letter.

Although this letter arrived around the same time as MagdaCordell’s return from New Haven, it is unclear whether it hadbeen posted or was brought back by her. What is certain is thatshe conveyed the trunk containing McHale’s collection ofAmerican ephemera, Elvis Presley records and copies of MADmagazine.35 This is an important point – as the deadline for thematerial for the catalogue, including Just what is it . . ., was 1st May, it would have been impossible for Hamilton to haveused material from the trunk if McHale had brought it backhimself on 31st May. The collage was therefore made betweenMagda Cordell’s return at the end of March and 1st May.

Aware of this impending deadline, Hamilton wrote toMcHale at the end of April with the news that a photo-collagewas to be included in the catalogue. This letter is untraced butcan be inferred from McHale’s response. In an undated lettersent towards the end of April, shortly before the end of thespring term for the Yale School of Fine Arts, he complainsthat the Hamiltons had ‘held their noses at the thought of collage’ during the preparations, wanting to retain an aura ofseriousness for the catalogue. ‘Now when I fall over backwardtrying to be serious you tell me you “crazy housed” my suggestions, and are working a la Mad [that is, in the style ofMAD magazine]. Big Deal. Put me down for some lessonswhen I get back, I’d like to be a crazy collagist too . . .’.McHale’s exasperated response reflects Hamilton’s lack ofinterest in collage before this date, but also indicates that theidea to include such a collage ‘a la Mad’ came from Hamiltonhimself, after seeing copies of the magazine that had arrived in the collection of material brought back by Magda Cordellat the end of March. Unlike more popular titles, MAD wasnot then available in England.

Hamilton’s interest in MAD is of some significance for theorigins of Just what is it . . .. Although it was a leading title inthe late 1950s, on a par with household names such as Life andPlayboy, MAD was unique in offering a critical position on1950s consumerism, exposing techniques of manipulation,often with the most biting parodies of advertising methods and media outlets. The April 1956 issue, for example, ran aspoof advertisement for ‘Marlbrando’ cigarettes, ‘The Trade-mark of Two-Fisted He-Men’.36 McHale recognised theimportance of MAD in the second part of his essay on ‘Theexpendable ikon’, published in 1959, and used pages from themagazine in a design for an unrealised collage book made atabout the same time.37 He describes it as ‘dadaist satirical’, andas representing ‘a kind of feedback control mechanism’ to themass media message with reference to Marshal McLuhan. Pre-vious commentaries on the Independent Group have focusedon the influence of Sigfried Giedion’s Mechanization takes

34 Massey, op. cit. (note 8), p.91.35 In conversation with Michael Craig-Martin, Hamilton suggests that McHale‘returned with a box of exotic things he had acquired there’. Evidently this couldnot have been the case if the materials were used for the production of the collage;see Searle, op. cit. (note 11), pp.67–83, esp. p.74. This error is repeated in manyaccounts of preparations for the exhibition; see, for example, C. Stephens and K.Stout: ‘This Was Tomorrow’, exh. cat. Art & The 60s. This Was Tomorrow, London(Tate Gallery) 2004, p.11. 36 Of particular note was MAD 22 (April 1955), the ‘Special Art Issue’, which tracedthe fictional career of the artist ‘Bill “Chicken Fat” Elder’, based on the illustrator

and MAD collaborator Will Elder.37 ‘Unfinished Collage Book Project. McHale no.14C’, by John McHale, rubber-stamped ‘13 November 1959’ on reverse; YCBA. 38 S. Giedion: Mechanization takes Command. A Contribution to Anonymous History,New York 1948, p.580; Robbins, op. cit. (note 7), p.57.39 Terry Hamilton to John McHale, 1st May 1956; RHA.40 J. Russell: ‘Introduction’, in S. Gablik and J. Russell: Pop Art Redefined, London1969, p.33.41 Searle, op. cit. (note 11), p.70.42 Memorable photographs from Life Magazine opened on 6th March 1952; TGA


19. Suggested design for the Group Two contribution to the catalogue of This isTomorrow, by John McHale. (Richard Hamilton archive).


22. See, hear, smell, touch, by Richard Hamilton. 1956. Collage, 21 by 22.1 cm.(Museum Ludwig, Cologne).

Hamilton have been served by detailed expositions, chiefly bythe artist himself, the collaborative circumstances in whichJust what is it . . . was made have meant that its origins haveremained vague and often erroneously explained.47 This pointis substantiated by Hamilton’s often-cited observation that thetitle of the collage was discovered on a cut-out scrap when thecollage had been completed. As is made clear below, Hamil-ton was in fact reuniting the text with the advertising imageof a domestic interior that forms the basis of the collage.

The disagreement between McHale and the Hamiltons wasnot about the authorship of the collage, but rather about the

general tone of the exhibition: was it to be serious-scientificor MAD-ironic? There was little question of individual creditfor contributions either in the catalogue or in the display, and it was perhaps on this basis that Group Two was in factable to produce its historic contribution. Nevertheless, thereseems little reason to suspect that McHale was responsible for Just what is it . . ., other than supplying essential imageryfrom magazines, both in the trunk and in a separate letter,sent, with grudging acceptance of the ‘Mad collage’ idea, justin time for the deadline. The group nevertheless continued tocollaborate. McHale in fact designed a separate poster forGroup Two (Fig.16) which Hamilton executed in the typo-graphic department of Newcastle upon Tyne University,where he was teaching during the period in which the exhi-bition was being prepared. McHale was evidently pleasedwith the results, which he received in early May, a few weeksbefore his departure from America. He wrote to thankHamilton for having sent a copy of the poster and adds: ‘Your [Hamilton’s] comment “that the poster looks as if youhad a hand in it, and the catalogue myself”, is excellent andcompletely in the tradition of our section!!’48 As it transpired,Group Two was to contribute two posters to the exhibition:Hamilton realised the potential of the ‘Mad collage’ he had produced, and used it to produce a second poster to usealongside McHale’s (Fig.16).

Hamilton had in fact made two other collages relating to theexhibition. A perspective visualisation of the Group Twoinstallation was made to illustrate a feature on the exhibition inthe issue of Architectural Design for September 1956 (Fig.21).This collage clearly shows the optical illusion on one wall, facing the popular culture mural, a Kia-Ora bottle (replaced in the final display with an inflatable Guinness bottle) and ajukebox, while the ‘fun-house’ structure shows an enlargedphotograph of spaghetti and meatballs, indicating a spaceHamilton had reserved for McHale, and the large labelled head – here Pierre Mendès-France, replaced in the final instal-lation with a photographically enlarged image of a similar‘labelled head’ collage, this time featuring President Tito. Thissecond collage, See, hear, smell, touch (Fig.22), which was alsoused in the exhibition catalogue, relates to Just what is it . . .both in format and by the use of text labels. The three collages,all now in museum collections in Germany, form a coherentgroup that marks a pivotal moment in Hamilton’s career.

Against this background, a detailed examination of Just whatis it . . . and its sources can be conducted. The perspectival andluminous coherence of the interior presented suggests that asingle image underlies the scene. This indeed is the case: theimage was taken from the June 1955 issue of the Ladies’ HomeJournal, which carried on the inside cover an advertisement forthe Pennsylvania-based company Armstrong Floors, showinga bright interior fitted with ‘Armstrong Royelle Linoleum’

47 For Hamilton’s descriptions, see R. Hamilton: ‘An exposition of $he’, in idem,op. cit. (note 45), pp.34–39; Cf. also idem: ‘Hommage à Chysler Corp’, in ArchitecturalDesign (March 1958); idem: ‘Urbane Image’, Living Arts (London) 1963.48 John McHale to Richard and Terry Hamilton, undated letter; RHA.49 P.H. Simpson: ‘Comfortable, Durable, and Decorative: Linoleum’s Rise and Fall from Grace’, APT Bulletin (1999), pp.17–24. Coincidentally, the ArmstrongCork Company Ltd., a British subsidiary of Armstrong Floors, placed a full-pageadvertisement in the catalogue for This is Tomorrow.

50 The collage has been described as a ‘stage set of modernity, a showroom filledwith up-to-date things. . .’; T. Lawson: ‘Bunk: Eduardo Paolozzi and the Legacyof the Independent Group’, in L. Alloway et al.: exh. cat. Modern Dreams. The Riseand Fall of Pop, New York (Clocktower Gallery) 1987, pp.18–29, esp. p.25.51 B. Colomina: ‘Friends of the Future: A Conversation with Peter Smithson’,October 94 (2000), pp.3–30, esp. p.11. In 1957 the Ladies’ Home Journal had a circulation of 5,449,000, significantly more than its nearest rival McCall’s; see T. Peterson: Magazines in the Twentieth Century, Urbana 1964, p.190.


21. This is Tomorrow, perspective of exhibition, by Richard Hamilton. 1956.Collage and ink on paper, 30.5 by 47 cm. (Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart).


(Fig.23). Armstrong had been pioneers in advertising since1917, their products appearing regularly in leading Americanmagazines.49 This advertisement, which constituted the basisfor Just what is it . . . and provides a large amount of theimagery in the final collage, would have appealed to Hamil-ton as it was almost the same size as the catalogue and, as acover rather than an inside page, it presented a relatively stur-dy support on which to attach further elements. Although theflooring is only partially exposed in the room, the RoyelleLinoleum is central, appearing rather as an empty stage wait-ing to be filled.50 In particular the first line of the advertisingcopy printed below the images clinched the choice: ‘Just what is it that makes today’s homes so different, so appealing?’This text was cut out and used as a caption for Just what is it . . ., displayed on the facing page of the Whitechapel catalogue (Fig.15). Although Hamilton has described comingacross the text after he had made the collage, cut off from itsoriginal source in ‘some picture past recall’, in fact text andimage were reunited.

The Ladies’ Home Journal was certainly not unknown inBritain at the time: Peter Smithson describes both this and the Woman’s Home Companion being sent to Britain during the War.51 Alison Smithson took clippings from the journal,and the type of advertisements the Smithsons found withindirectly influenced their important essay ‘But Today We Collect Ads’, published just after This is Tomorrow closed, inwhich they described the ‘magical [. . .] technical virtuosity’ ofcontemporary advertising. A short list of magazine sources atthe end of their article suggested that the Ladies’ Home Journalwas by far the chief source for advertisements for theirinquiry.52 Alongside the Saturday Evening Post, also publishedby Curtis Publications, it was unrivalled in the quality of itscolour reproductions and generous format. Both titles wereprinted using offset lithography, resulting in a remarkablerange and depth of colour and a clarity of photographicreproduction by contrast with the more smudgy primitiveletterpress that was used for magazines such as Picture Post inEngland. For Richard Hoggart, the newer style of journalscompared with the older ones were ‘rather like the latestsynthetic cocktail to a glass of not-very-strong beer’.53 Newtypes of food advertising, emphasising particularly a type ofsalacious tomato-red hue, led to the phrase ‘lick the page’ mag-azines.54 Such magazines were ‘Paradise Regained’, accordingto Banham: ‘Remember we had spent our teenage years surviving the horrors and deprivations of a six-year war. Forus, the fruits of peace had to be tangible, preferably edible’.55

Among the first images that Hamilton attached to the Armstrong advertisement was the view of the Earth – not from a satellite, as the image might suggest, but from an aerial camera that exaggerated the Earth’s curvature: thepicture comprises many photographs taken from a height of

one hundred miles. This is one of the few images that canwith some degree of certainty be traced to McHale’s archive,which contains two copies of the double-page advertisement(taken from Life, 5th September 1955),56 one of which is miss-ing its left page, the source of the section of the image thatHamilton used in the collage (Fig.24). The image probablyrefers to ‘Space’ on Hamilton’s list of subjects, althoughknowledge of the image shows that it might more accuratelyrepresent ‘Humanity’.

With the ceiling fixed, the rest of the stage machinery anddramatis personae could be installed. Fulfilling the criteria‘Cinema’, the pastoral view through the window in the original was obliterated by a reproduction of a well-knownphotograph of the Warner Cinema, Broadway, on the open-ing night in 1927 of Alan Crosland’s The Jazz Singer, starringAl Jolson.57 Hamilton very carefully recreated the effect of a window by the addition of a window bar down the centreand at the top, using an opaque pigment, probably gouache.The theme of entertainment was continued to the right with the addition of the television. This was taken from an

52 A. Smithson and P. Smithson: ‘But Today We Collect Ads’, Ark 18 (November1956), pp.49–50.53 R. Hoggart: The Uses of Literacy, London 1986 (1st ed. 1957), p.222. Hoggart wasreferring to popular publications in England, but his remark is equally applicable todevelopments in America.54 Many thanks to Posy Simmonds for this information. In the new age of marketresearch and advertising, four-colour reproduction gave magazines a distinctadvantage over television advertising. Although a few colour programmes were

broadcast in the early 1960s, broadcast costs were still prohibitively high; see Peterson, op. cit. (note 51), p.37.55 R. Banham: Fathers of Pop, revised transcript cited in Massey, op. cit. (note 8), p.84.56 John McHale archive, YCBA, Box 2.57 Hamilton has described seeing this film in London shortly after its release as the‘high-point’ of his childhood; conversation with the present writer, 25th June2007.



23. Advertisement for Armstrong Royal Floors. Reproduced in Ladies’ HomeJournal (June 1955).

slightly smaller and larger versions appeared in Fortune magazine and Holiday in February and May of 1955, and inthe February 1955 issue of National Geographic (Fig.27). It is unlikely that the advertisement was repeated later in theyear, when new Ford models were being introduced.Redecoration of the back wall was completed with the addi-tion of a manila-toned masking sheet, cut very accurately to fit around the collaged images and the rubber plant that remained from the Armstrong advertisement. A similarsheet of white paper suggests the effect of light from thewindow, an anomaly given the nocturnal setting.

Affixed over the lower left corner of the Al Jolson view, the image of the woman vacuuming the stairs, with the nowlegendary claim that ‘ordinary cleaners reach only this far’,was taken from the same issue of the Ladies’ Home Journal asthe Armstrong Royal Floors advertisement (Fig.28). On page139 the Hoover Company advertised its new Constellationmodel, ‘with exclusive double-stretch hose’. The Space Ageapparatus, the first vacuum cleaner to drift on an air bed, isjuxtaposed with an ‘actual photo’ of the new model in use:‘Look at the reach of the Constellation!’ Cut around the

25. Advertisement for Stromsberg-Carlson television manufacturer. Reproduced inLife (10th January 1955).

advertisement for Stromberg-Carlson televisions reproducedin the issue of Life for 10th January 1955 (Fig.25).58 Curiously,the image shown on the screen of a woman telephoning hasbeen cut out and then put back. The most likely explanationis that the excision was made by Terry Hamilton and MagdaCordell when the material was gathered, and later replacedby Hamilton. By affixing the television over part of the fireplace in the original image, and obliterating the rest of it, Hamilton evokes a change recurring in many householdsin the 1950s: with the simultaneous introduction of centralheating and television, the fireplace was no longer the traditional centre of the home.

Covering the insipid painting in the Armstrong advertise-ment, a poster showing the comic book Young Romanceanswered the subject of ‘Comics (Picture Information)’ onHamilton’s list. Although in the picture space it is further back than the television set, it in fact overlaps it, and was thus stuck down afterwards. It is evidently too small to be the actual cover of Young Romance, no.26, 1949, but is rathera ‘house ad’ – an advertisement placed by the publisher, Crestwood Publications, in another of their titles – in this case another romance comic, Young Love, no.15, ofNovember 1950 (Fig.26).59 Young Romance was the first pictorial romantic–escapist comic, following on from pulp-story publications such as Intimate Confessions, used by

58 The advertisement was also included in The American Home (November 1954). 59 Many thanks to Randolphe Hoppe, of the Jack Kirby Museum, and to HarryMendryck for researching and finding this source on my behalf. Although the house


24. ‘100 Mile High Portrait of Earth’, double-page feature published in Life (5th September 1955).


Paolozzi in his collage I was a rich man’s plaything (1947)which inspired numerous imitators. As has often been pointed out, Hamilton’s use of the comic cover, drawn bythe leading comic book artist Jack Kirby, anticipates the use made of comic books by Roy Lichtenstein. In directcontrast, the framed formal portrait to the right of the YoungRomance, as well as providing a moment of bathos, may betaken to represent ‘History’ on Hamilton’s list. The sitter is visibly not John Ruskin, as has been suggested,60 and the source is as yet unidentified. Hamilton repeated theirreverent gambit of including a token ‘old master’ in GroupTwo’s This is Tomorrow display, a framed reproduction ofVan Gogh’s Sunflowers from the National Gallery, London,at that time in the collection of the Tate Gallery.

More up to date was the heraldic Ford logo, cut to createa lampshade slightly larger than the one it covers in the original. The crown was used as an insignia for the FordFairlane, a model released in early 1955, appearing on thebonnet, side and between the back seats, and was also usedto advertise this and other models manufactured concur-rently. Although the precise source has yet to be identified,

advertisement appears in a few other issues of Young Love and Young Romance, onlyYoung Love 15 has the lettering in red.



26. Advertisement for Young Romance 26 (1949), included in Young Love 15 (1950),p.23. (Collection of Harry Mendryk; © Joe Simon and Jack Kirby).

27. Advertisement for Ford Fairlane. Reproduced in Fortune magazine (February 1955).

60 M. Garlake: New Art New World. British Art in Postwar Society, New Haven andLondon 1998, p.143.

won third prize in the 1954 Mr America competition held inLos Angeles. The magazine, which was of the ‘posing strap’genre, attributes the photograph to ‘Bruce of Los Angeles’,65

the well-known ‘physique photographer’ Bruce Bellas(1909–74). As with many other male physique photographs ofthe time, a posing suit – a modern fig leaf, perhaps – has beenadded to the pouch in the original photograph. The ‘peerless’Koszewski, who had also won the ‘best abdominals’ prize,suggestively holds a Tootsie Roll Pop in place of a dumbbell,inserted through a slit cut between his thumb and forefinger.This image is taken from an advertisement for Tootsie RollPops, a type of lollipop, which appeared in an as yet untracedadvertisement in a comic book.

Although the published source for the photograph of ‘Eve’has also yet to be traced, the sitter can be identified as theAmerican painter Jo Baer, who posed for nude photographswhile she was a struggling artist in New York in the early1950s.66 Hamilton was not aware of the identity of the modelwhen he affixed the image, taken most probably from a pin-up, or amateur photography, magazine. ComplementingZabo’s posing trunks, fig-leaf nipple tassels had been paintedonto the original photograph by the publisher. Similarly, the‘cloche’, or lampshade, hat is a collaged addition to the origi-nal photograph, as the roughly cut-out left side of the sitter’shead shows. Close examination also shows that ‘Eve’ iscollaged over the front edge of the sofa, perhaps to avoid herraised right arm obscuring the left eye of the telephoningwoman on the television screen. The presence of ‘Eve’ looksforward to many such images in Hamilton’s œuvre. In 1961 henoted that ‘it is the Playboy “Playmate of the month” pull-outpin-up which provides us with the closest contemporaryequivalent of the odalisque in painting’. Playboy, launched byHugh Heffner in December 1953, was the first magazine tocombine high production values with risqué pin-up photo-graphy – a ‘quintessential emblem of the affluent society’,according to Dominic Sandbrook67 – and stands in contrast toother more saucy, under-the-counter American publicationssuch as those published by Robert Harrison, in particularBeauty Parade which ran from 1952 to 1954. It is from theseand other titles such as Cavalcade of Burlesque and Showgirls, orperhaps Amateur Screen and Photography, that the photograph is most likely to have been taken.

Four elements of the collage remain to be addressed: thetin of ham, the newspaper, the tape recorder and the rug.The Armour Star tin of ham, placed incongruously on thecoffee table, which may be considered as Hamilton’s abbre-viated signature, in keeping with the quick-fire language of advertising, is taken from an advertisement that appearedin Look magazine for 20th April 1954 (Fig.29).68 The Journalof Commerce placed on the chair in the foreground was not part of the original Armstrong advertisement, and was thus included by Hamilton to represent the category

‘Newspaper’. ‘Tape recorder (aural information)’ wasshown in a similarly straightforward manner by the taperecorder in the foreground, although it is curious that awind-up model should have been selected when electricmachines were more frequently advertised in magazines ofthe time. According to Hamilton, this and the rug were thefinal elements added to the collage.69 The model, a‘Reporter’, can be identified by the barely legible brandname between the reels.70 Reel-to-reel magnetic recordinghad been pioneered in Germany during the 1930s, but it wasonly in the late 1940s that the technology was commerciallydeveloped in America. In 1956 the tape recorder was still a relatively new invention and was advertised widely intechnical and also non-specialist magazines such as Holiday.Formally, the tape recorder brings to mind the Remingtontypewriter included by Raoul Hausmann in his 1920 collageDada Siegt (Fig.31), which bears strong similarities to Hamil-ton’s collage, both formal (e.g. the segment of the Earth on

one of the latest authors to repeat the misidentification of Koszweski; D. Sandbrook:White Heat. A History of Britain in the Swinging Sixties, London 2006, pp.66–67.64 Richard Hamilton in conversation with the present writer, 25th June 2007.65 Tomorrow’s Man 2, 9 (September 1954), p.35.66 Conversation with the present writer, June 2007. This identification is based onlikeness and has yet to be substantiated with documentary evidence. Nevertheless,


30. Irwin ‘Zabo’ Koszewski. Photograph by Bruce Bellas. Reproduced inTomorrow’s Man (September 1954).


bottom stair, the slanting dado and the woman vacuuming atthe top, the affixed cut-out transformed the top of the greencupboard at the far left of the Armstrong Floors advertise-ment into something more monumental in appearance.61

Intriguingly, as with the screen of the Stromberg-Carlsontelevision mentioned above, the black arrow with the words‘ordinary cleaners reach only this far’ has been cut out andthen reinserted. It may be that the arrow was originally cut outfor use elsewhere, then put back when it became clear howwell it fitted the stairs. The arrow creates a link with the signson the façade of the Warner Cinema, visible through the window, and adds to the verbal saturation of the room.Hamilton’s interest in the motif of the arrow had been madeexplicit in the Trainsition series of four paintings made in 1954. As Anne Massey describes, he had taken the arrow motifdirectly from Paul Klee, whose Pädagogisches Skizzenbuch(Pedagogical Sketchbook; 1925) had been the subject of Inde-pendent Group discussions in November and December1953.62 Whereas in the Trainsition paintings Hamilton uses thearrow to indicate the direction of movement across the flatsurface of the canvas, in Just what is it . . . the arrow functions

as it does in the original advertisement, to draw attention to a particular aspect of the image.

The bodybuilder at the centre of the composition, havingentered from stage left, is not Charles Atlas, as has frequentlybeen suggested, but the champion bodybuilder Irwin ‘Zabo’Koszewski.63 He represents ‘Adam’, according to Hamilton,alongside the burlesque ‘Eve’ teetering on the sofa.64 Thesource of the photograph of Zabo is particularly fitting: theSeptember 1954 issue of the pocket-sized magazine Tomor-row’s Man, published by the Irvin Johnson Health Studio inChicago (Fig.30). This was one of a new genre of small-format magazines that appeared during the 1950s, includingthe Los Angeles-based publication Physique Pictorial (founded1951) and the Chicago-based Vim (1954), as well as Male Classics founded in 1956 in Greek Street, London, and theHollywood-based Fizeek (1959). These differed from existing‘physical culture’ titles such as Muscle Power, Strength andHealth and Iron Man in carrying little pretence at being aimedat a heterosexual bodybuilding readership. Koszewski was awell-known model who appeared in many of these titles. Thephotograph used in Just what is it . . . was taken after he had

61 Two other notable appearances of the vacuum cleaner in twentieth-century art maybe mentioned as bracketing Hamilton’s interest in the Hoover Constellation: ArthurDove’s 1925 collage The critic (Whitney Museum of American Art, New York), incor-porating an advertisement for the ‘Energex Home Favourite Model’; and Jeff Koons’smore recent ‘readymade’ sculpture New Hoover Convertibles, New Shelton Wet/Dry Dis-placed Double Decker, 1981–87 (Museum of Modern Art, New York).

62 Massey, op. cit. (note 8), pp.74–75. 63 Many thanks to John McHale Jr. for bringing Koszewski’s identity to my attention.The identification was first published in D. Waldman: Collage, assemblage, and the foundobject, London 1992, p.269. Charles Atlas appears in Paolozzi’s Evadne in Green Dimen-sion of 1949, featuring the exclamation ‘Bunk!’ For the collage and the source illustra-tion, see W. Konnertz: Eduardo Paolozzi, Cologne 1984, p.43. Dominic Sandbrook is


28. Advertisement for Hoover Constellation. Reproduced in Ladies’ Home Journal(June 1955).


29. Advertisement for Armour Star Ham. Reproduced in Look (20th April 1954).

Jo Baer has identified the photographers as Nat Wilkes and Sidney Wasserman. 67 D. Sandbrook: Never Had it So Good, London 2005, p.620.68 All source identifications have been corroborated by comparing measurementswith the original. 69 Richard Hamilton in conversation with the present writer, 25th June 2007.70 Many thanks to Stuart Blacklock (EMI archives) for this identification.

the ceiling) and thematic (in the connection drawn withAmerica). The reception of Dada and German modernismin general by members of the Independent Group is a richsubject for further research. Alloway’s observation, pub-lished just after This is Tomorrow closed, that Dada shows that a work of art ‘may be made of bus tickets or it may looklike an advertisement’ points to the importance of thisprecedent in Hamilton’s and McHale’s work in the 1950s.71

Just what is it . . . introduced the theme of the interior,often containing one or more figures, that has preoccupiedHamilton ever since.72 His own involvement with interiordesign, notably as a lecturer at the Hugh Casson’s School of Interior Design at the beginning of 1957, was first con-solidated around the time of This is Tomorrow.73 But if theintention of Just what is it . . . was to create an image of thefuture, close analysis of the imagery reveals an equivocalresult. None of the source material so far discovered datesfrom 1956, and elements go back to the beginning of the1950s (the television design, the wind-up reel-to-reel taperecorder), to 1949 (the Young Romance cover) and to earlierdates (the Warner Cinema in 1927; the Victorian portrait).Hamilton later confirmed this retrospective element,describing his conception of the interior in general as ‘a set of anachronisms, a museum, with the lingering residuesof decorative styles that an inhabited space collects’.74 Incontrast to the ‘House of the Future’, created by Peter andAlison Smithson for the 1956 Daily Mail Ideal Home exhi-bition – a space-age residence that ‘crystallized the domesticimage of the brutalist sensibility’75 – Hamilton’s interior ismore British than American, a ‘cozy little future-world’,76

heir to a genre of English interior scenes reaching back tothe eighteenth-century conversation piece. An element notso far identified is the black-and-white speckled rug, whoseappearance may have been inspired by the black-and-whiterug in the original Armstrong advertisement. It is, however,an enlarged detail of a photographic postcard Hamiltonfound of the ‘Sands and Promenade’ of Whitley Bay, on the Northumberland coast, probably taken around 1930.77

Falling in between ‘Adam’ and ‘Eve’, this is a very local, un-American view of ‘Humanity’.

George Orwell wrote that the best indication of the Englishcharacter could be found on the magazine racks of smallnewsagent’s shops, where the extent of a nation’s hobbies and pastimes is documented.78 Just what is it . . . reveals howmuch these pastimes were influenced by American culture inthe mid-1950s, but also that the setting for these new pursuitsremained on a more modest and domesticated English scale.Whereas many accounts have described the collage as an up-to-date image of contemporary life, in fact a strong element of nostalgia is woven into the contemporary setting.

It may therefore be suggested that underlying the crowd-ed imagery of Just what is it . . . is an anxiety that this new cultural order could not, in fact, be sustained. When itfirst appeared, as a reproduction in an exhibition catalogue,Britain was in the midst of the Suez crisis, and the long tra-dition of British imperial dominion and supposed globalsupremacy appeared irreparably broken. It could well havetaken as a title Harold Macmillan’s famous appraisal thatBritain had ‘never had it so good’, given in a speech in July1957, particularly as Macmillan went on to describe the general anxiety that this ‘goodness’ was unsustainable; ‘is ittoo good to last?’79 Just what is it . . . is a harbinger not onlyof the iconography of much post-War art, but also reflectsthe disquiet of its time, marked by the end of Empire and the dawn of the Nuclear Age. True to their story, ‘Adam’and ‘Eve’ must soon leave this consumer paradise. Viewedin such a context, Hamilton’s little picture seems to say that,in an Age of Boom, things sooner or later must go Pop.

71 L. Alloway: ‘Dada 1956’, Architectural Design 26 (November 1956), p.374.72 See R. Hamilton: ‘Interiors’, in idem, op. cit. (note 45), pp.61–63; see also exh.cat. Richard Hamilton. Interiors 1964–79, Paris (Galerie Maeght) 1981. 73 Hamilton had earlier taught Basic Design at the Central School of Art in the early1950s, before developing a similar course at King’s College, University of Durham,Newcastle upon Tyne.74 Hamilton, op. cit. (note 72), p.62.75 K. Frampton: ‘New Brutalism and the Welfare State: 1949–59’, in Alloway, op. cit.

(note 50), p.49.76 T. Lawson: ‘Bunk: Eduardo Paolozzi and the Legacy of the Independent Group’,in Alloway, op. cit. (note 50), p.25.77 Hamilton was particularly attracted to photographic, rather than lithographic,postcards, as they could be enlarged without losing resolution. The Whitley Baypostcard was used in a number of subsequent works.78 G. Orwell: ‘Boys’ Weeklies’, Horizon 3 (March 1940).79 The Times (22nd July 1957); cited in Sandbrook, op. cit. (note 63), p.80.


31. Dada Siegt, by Raoul Hausmann. 1920. Photomontage and collage with water-colour on paper, 60 by 43 cm. (Private collection).


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