Richard Hamilton: Modern moral matters

With his memorably titled 1956 collage «Just What is it that Makes Today’s Homes So Different, So Appealing?», British artist Richard Hamilton (born 1922) heralded the British Pop revolution; and with his 1967 Swingeing London series of prints, which depicted the arrest of Mick Jagger and Robert Fraser, Hamilton’s art entered the general public consciousness. But unlike so many Pop artists, Hamilton was never an uncritical or ambivalent advocate of postwar society, and he has often agitated directly against it, producing a great deal of openly political, satirical work that assaults both consumer culture at large and more immediate political events. This monograph, published for Hamilton’s 2010 exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery in London (his first exhibition since 1992), brings together Hamilton’s famous «protest» paintings as well as newer political works and features essays by Benjamin H.D. Buchloh and Michael Bracewell.