[Jazz & Song] [Beatles] Hamilton, Richard. (1922 - 2011)
Signed White Album Collage Insert Poster
Original lithograph poster, 22 x 33 inches, issued for the British Edition LP and featuring multiple photographs of the band, on stage and off, including strips of contact prints, signed lower right in black ink, "Richard Hamilton." Usual folds to the album's size, else fine.Hamilton made the present poster as an insert for the band's 1968 album The Beatles (commonly known as The White Album, after its plain white sleeve, which Hamilton also designed). He recalled that he "began to feel a bit guilty at putting their double album under plain white wrappers; even the lettering is casual, almost invisible, a blind stamping. I suggested it could be jazzed up with a large edition print, an insert that would be even more glamorous than a normal sleeve." During preparation, for a fortnight in October 1968, Paul McCartney drove almost daily to Hamilton’s house in Highgate, to work together on the collage. Paul: "It was very exciting for me because I was interested in art, and now I could be his assistant for a week… gather the pictures and make new prints. And then I could watch the whole week while he made the collage. It’s great to watch someone paint. The fine thing was that he eventually filled the whole collage with pictures and then added the white paper to that he sticked everywhere, to give it some space... He explained that it could breathe that way." Most of the recent pictures were taken by John Kelly, though some of the pictures of Paul were taken by his new lover, Linda Eastman.
Richard Hamilton was a founding member of the ICA's Independent Group, the collection of writers, thinkers and artists which met at the organisation from 1952 to 1955, and which helped pioneer new cultural attitudes in Britain–notably through its embrace of pop culture. Hamilton's activities included curating exhibitions, such as Growth and Form, 1951, and Man, Machine and Motion, 1955; while his own work was included in Aspects of British Art, 1950, and Young Painters, 1952. His later exhibitions at the institution include Richard Hamilton, Dieter Roth, 1977, and Richard Hamilton and Rita Donagh: A Cellular Maze, 1984; as well as the group exhibitions The Independent Group, 1990, and The Secret Public, 2007. (9145)
Art/Sculpture Song