Richard Hamilton, 1922-2011 | reviews, news & interviews
Richard Hamilton, 1922-2011
Richard Hamilton, 1922-2011
Hamilton's work was too challenging, too difficult to pin down
Wednesday, 14 September 2011
At 89, Hamilton was still a subversive – perhaps the last of his kind
Hard on the heels of the death of Lucian Freud comes the departure of another British art great, an artist who was Freud’s exact contemporary but who seems to belong in a different aesthetic universe – Richard Hamilton. While he was the more influential of the two, by some distance, Hamilton was never a contender for that nonsensical soubriquet "Britain’s greatest living artist". His work was too challenging, too difficult to pin down and it never told Britain anything it wanted to hear about itself.
Hard on the heels of the death of Lucian Freud comes the departure of another British art great, an artist who was Freud’s exact contemporary but who seems to belong in a different aesthetic universe – Richard Hamilton. While he was the more influential of the two, by some distance, Hamilton was never a contender for that nonsensical soubriquet "Britain’s greatest living artist". His work was too challenging, too difficult to pin down and it never told Britain anything it wanted to hear about itself.
Richard Hamilton was one of the artists who got us where we are today (and if you don’t like where that is, that’s tough)
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