Landscape

In 1952, Richard Hamilton, together with other London-based artists, founded the “Independent Group”. The group’s central tenet was that the artist should immerse himself in urban life and an everyday culture informed by the mass media, a demand that paved the way for what was to become British pop art. The members of the Independent Group were among the first to regard the iconography of commercials, films, fashion and comic strips as an integral part of contemporary culture worthy of being taken seriously by the artist. In 1956, Hamilton took part in a path-breaking exhibition at the Whitechapel Art Gallery aptly titled “This Is Tomorrow”. His small collage “Just what is it that makes today’s homes so different, so appealing?” became one of pop art’s most iconic images. His “Landscape” from 1965 is a panoramic black-and-white photograph of a landscape seen from a bird’s-eye perspective. By adding coloured areas and using collage techniques, Hamilton eliminates all spatial depth. Hamilton manipulates the photograph in the manner of a commercial artist, highlighting some parts, deleting others. The result is a two-dimensional, poster-like image from which everything remotely reminiscent of an atmospheric landscape is conspicuously absent.