''Just what is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing?'' is a
collage by English artist
Richard Hamilton.
[Dempsey, Amy. ''Styles, Schools and Movements'', p.217, ]Thames and Hudson
Thames & Hudson (sometimes T&H for brevity) is a publisher of illustrated books in all visually creative categories: art, architecture, design, photography, fashion, film, and the performing arts. It also publishes books on archaeology, history, ...
, 2002. It measures × . The work is now in the collection of the
Kunsthalle Tübingen,
Tübingen, Germany. It was the first work of
pop art to achieve iconic status.
[
]
History
''Just what is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing?'' was created in 1956 for the catalogue of the exhibition '' This Is Tomorrow'' in London
London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...
, England in which it was reproduced in black and white. In addition, the piece was used in posters for the exhibit.["This is tomorrow"]
, thisistomorrow2.com (scroll to "image 027TT-1956.jpg"). Retrieved 27 August 2008. Hamilton and his friends John McHale and John Voelcker
John Harold Westgarth Voelcker (20 July 1927-14 September 1972) was an English architect. A member of the Team 10 group of architects, he ran a small rural practice before his appointment first Professor of Architecture at the University of Glas ...
had collaborated to create the room that became the best-known part of the exhibition.
Hamilton subsequently created several works in which he reworked the subject and composition of the pop art collage, including a 1992 version featuring the female bodybuilder Bernie Price which he produced using a Quantel Paintbox The Quantel Paintbox was a dedicated computer graphics workstation for composition of broadcast television video and graphics. Produced by the British production equipment manufacturer Quantel (which, via a series of mergers, is now part of Grass ...
.
Sources
According to a 2007 article by the art historian John-Paul Stonard, the collage consists of images taken mainly from American magazines. The principal template was an image of a modern sitting-room in an advertisement in '' Ladies' Home Journal'' for Armstrong Floors, which describes the "modern fashion in floors". The title is also taken from copy in the advert, which states "Just what is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing? Open planning of course—and a bold use of color." The body builder is Irvin "Zabo" Koszewski, winner of Mr L.A. in 1954. The photograph is taken from '' Tomorrow's Man'' magazine, September 1954. The artist Jo Baer
Josephine Gail Baer (born August 7, 1929) is an American painter associated with minimalist art. She began exhibiting her work at the Fischbach Gallery, New York, and other venues for contemporary art in the mid-1960s. In the mid-1970s, she turne ...
, who posed for erotic magazines in her youth, has claimed that she is the burlesque woman on the sofa, but the magazine from which the picture is taken has not been identified. The staircase is taken from an advertisement for Hoover's new model " Constellation", and it was sourced from the same issue of ''Ladies' Home Journal'', June 1955, as the Armstrong Floors ad. The picture of artist Jack Kirby
Jack Kirby (born Jacob Kurtzberg; August 28, 1917 – February 6, 1994) was an American comic book artist, writer and editor, widely regarded as one of the medium's major innovators and one of its most prolific and influential creators. He gre ...
's cover of ''Young Romance
''Young Romance'' is a romantic comic book series created by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby for the Crestwood Publications imprint Prize Comics in 1947. Generally considered the first romance comic,Ro, Ronin. ''Tales to Astonish: Jack Kirby, St ...
'' was from an advertisement for the magazine included in its associated publication ''Young Love'' (no 15, 1950). The TV is a Stromberg-Carlson, taken from a 1955 advert. Hamilton asserted that the rug was a blow-up from a photograph depicting a crowd on the Whitley Bay
Whitley Bay is a seaside town in the North Tyneside borough in Tyne and Wear, England. It formerly governed as part of Northumberland and has been part of Tyne and Wear since 1974. It is part of the wider Tyneside built-up area, being around e ...
beach. The image of planet Earth at the top was cut from ''Life'' magazine (Sept 1955). The original reference image for the collage from ''Life'' magazine supplied to Hamilton is in the John McHale archives at Yale University. It was one of the first images to be laid down in the collage. The Victorian man in the portrait has not been identified. The periodical on the chair is a copy of ''The Journal of Commerce
''The Journal of Commerce'' is a biweekly magazine published in the United States that focuses on global trade topics. First published in 1827 in New York, it has a circulation of approximately 15,000. It provides editorial content to manage da ...
'', founded by telegraph pioneer Samuel F. B. Morse
Samuel Finley Breese Morse (April 27, 1791 – April 2, 1872) was an American inventor and painter. After having established his reputation as a portrait painter, in his middle age Morse contributed to the invention of a single-wire telegraph ...
. The tape recorder is a British-made Boosey & Hawkes "Reporter", but the source of the image has not been identified. The view through the window is a widely reproduced photograph of the exterior of a cinema in 1927 showing the premiere of the early "talkie
A sound film is a motion picture with synchronized sound, or sound technologically coupled to image, as opposed to a silent film. The first known public exhibition of projected sound films took place in Paris in 1900, but decades passed before ...
" film, ''The Jazz Singer
''The Jazz Singer'' is a 1927 American musical drama film directed by Alan Crosland. It is the first feature-length motion picture with both synchronized recorded music score as well as lip-synchronous singing and speech (in several isolate ...
'' starring Al Jolson
Al Jolson (born Eizer Yoelson; June 9, 1886 – October 23, 1950) was a Lithuanian-American Jewish singer, comedian, actor, and vaudevillian. He was one of the United States' most famous and highest-paid stars of the 1920s, and was self-billed ...
; the actual original source of the image has not yet been found.
Authorship
In 2006, artist John McHale's son, John McHale Jr., said that his father claimed he was the creator of the image, having provided the original measured design and iconic material for the collage, including the magazines from which much of the collage was assembled. McHale said that the source material was his, sent to Hamilton from Yale University
Yale University is a Private university, private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Sta ...
, where McHale was studying, and that Hamilton's role was simply "mechanical" cutting out and pasting according to McHale's design.
In response, Hamilton said this was "absurd. The collage has been widely reproduced over the last fifty years and my authorship was never, to my knowledge, contested by John McHale Sr. when he was alive."["A statement by Richard Hamilton"]
warholstars.com, November 2006. Retrieved 27 August 2008. Hamilton said that McHale provided him with a rough layout for six pages for the ''This is Tomorrow'' exhibition catalogue, but he only used two of them, and the other pages, including this collage, were created by himself; the American magazines that provided the images were from the collection of Magda
Magda is a feminine given name, sometimes a short form ( hypocorism) of names such as Magdalena, which may refer to:
* Magda Apanowicz (born 1985), Canadian actress
* Magda B. Arnold (1903–2002), Czechoslovakian-born American psychologist
* M ...
and Frank Cordell
Frank Cordell (1 June 1918 – 6 July 1980) was a British composer, arranger and conductor, who was active with the Institute of Contemporary Arts. He also composed music under the name Frank Meilleur or Meillear (Meillear being his mother's ma ...
, and the images were cut out by Hamilton's wife, Terry O'Reilly, and Magda Cordell.[
Magda Cordell has said that "While Richard, of course, put together the well-known poster collage for the group (Just what is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing?), some of the material in that collage came from John McHale's files, and both Terry Hamilton and I helped gather the images. We often looked for material in the studio John and I shared. Sometimes when I look at that poster, I think it looks a bit like the sitting room in Cleveland Square where our studio was, but this may be only my imagination".][Robbins, David, editor. ''The Independent Group: Postwar Britain and the Aesthetics of Plenty'', p.190, MIT Press 1990, ]
References in popular culture
In 2007, the Serbia
Serbia (, ; Serbian: , , ), officially the Republic of Serbia (Serbian: , , ), is a landlocked country in Southeastern and Central Europe, situated at the crossroads of the Pannonian Basin and the Balkans. It shares land borders with Hungar ...
n and former Yugoslav
Yugoslavia (; sh-Latn-Cyrl, separator=" / ", Jugoslavija, Југославија ; sl, Jugoslavija ; mk, Југославија ;; rup, Iugoslavia; hu, Jugoszlávia; rue, label=Pannonian Rusyn, Югославия, translit=Juhoslavija ...
new wave band VIS Idoli
Vis, ViS, VIS, and other capitalizations may refer to:
Places
* Vis (island), a Croatian island in the Adriatic sea
** Vis (town), on the island of Vis
* Vis (river), in south-central France
* Vis, Bulgaria, a village in Haskovo Province
* Vi ...
released a career spanning box set featuring the image as a basis for the box set cover.
Notes and references
{{reflist, 30em
1956 works
Collage
English art
Pop art
British art