John Latham, Belief System 1959. Tate. © John Latham Estate, courtesy Lisson Gallery, London.
In the 1960s artists in Britain adopt a radical approach to question society’s values, merging art with life
At this time, a growing activist counterculture is concerned about civil rights, the threat of nuclear war and interventions by the United States in Asia, Africa and South America. These calls for freedom and resistance anticipate shifts in art and youth culture. Some British artists become part of international experimental art movements such as Fluxus, which makes art out of actions. They use performance, poetry and any materials available to allow chance to shape the outcome of their work.
A pivotal moment is the 1966 Destruction in Art Symposium in London, co-organised by the German artist and activist Gustav Metzger. Over 50 artists, scientists, poets and thinkers from Europe and the United States come to London for a series of performances and discussions. They explore the role of destruction in art and how it relates to this new social and cultural era. Several of the works in this room reflect events and happenings that take place during the symposium.
Some artists engage with scientific and technological developments. They experiment with kinetic sculpture: sculpture that moves. At times, these works aim to express fear of the way machines are used throughout society. Other works explore the vitality of life. The gallery Signals London is an important meeting place for South American and European kinetic sculpture artists in the mid 1960s. It provides a forum for artists who believe in ‘Art’s imaginative integration with technology, science, architecture and our entire environment'.
Marcel Duchamp, Richard Hamilton, Nine malic moulds 1914–5, reconstruction by Richard Hamilton 1965
Nine malic moulds is a sheet of glass with lead wire drawings depicting what Duchamp called the ‘cemetery of uniforms and liveries’. They are outfits worn in nine different jobs that could be held by men, representing the ‘bachelors’. The work also shows the network of ‘capillary tubes’ that connect each of the nine Moulds to the first sequence of Sieves. These designs feature in the lower panel of the full Large Glass. Hamilton remade the study by using a full-size photograph of a drawing that Duchamp had created in 1914.
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Marcel Duchamp, The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors Even (The Green Box) 1934
The Green Box is Duchamp’s own publication of the notes, diagrams and studies for The Large Glass. Each handwritten note is reproduced as an exact copy, including torn edges, blots, erasures, revisions and illegible sections. The Green Box is the literary double of The Large Glass, both a documentation of Duchamp’s working process and a guide to understanding the many layers of hidden meaning in the piece. Most of the notes were completed before Duchamp left France for New York in 1915.4
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Richard Hamilton, Marcel Duchamp, Sieves 1965, reconstruction by Richard Hamilton 1965
This arc of seven intersecting cones is the first glass reconstruction attempted by Hamilton. It wasn’t a direct remake of a Duchamp work, although he did make a drawing of the subject in 1914. Instead, Hamilton made it to test if he could reproduce the dust effect described in The Green Box: ‘For the sieves in the glass – allow dust to fall on this part, a dust of 3 or 4 months, and wipe well around it in such a way that this dust will be a kind of colour’. Hamilton reflected: ‘So unusual are the techniques that it seems sensible to repeat them.’
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Richard Hamilton, Marcel Duchamp, Oculist Witnesses 1966, reconstruction by Richard Hamilton 1966
Duchamp made a perspective drawing of three eye charts for The Large Glass. He was interested in optical phenomena – the original French title Térmoins oculiste puns on terms for eye witnesses and opticians’ charts. Duchamp spent three months scraping a silver section of the glass to leave reflecting images. Hamilton did not have time to follow this process. His shortcut was to prepare a silkscreen on silver glass treated with acid. This study is a trial, something Duchamp had not needed to make.
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Richard Hamilton, The Passage of the Bride 1998–9
The Passage of the Bride shows a first-floor passage and windowed alcove in Hamilton’s home. On the right wall, a framed glass panel includes a view of the lower section of Duchamp’s Large Glass. A woman is visible in the panel, as if in reflection, standing in for the ‘bride’. Hamilton made the work by digitally altering a photograph and painting over the image of the framed mirror with oils. Duchamp’s ideas concerning perspective and image manipulation remained an enduring influence on Hamilton’s artistic approach.
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Richard Hamilton, $he 1958–61
$he explores contemporary symbols of desire and their interconnected relationships. Imagery recalling adverts for mass produced household appliances and fragments of the female body from magazines are presented together, deconstructing the seductive tendencies of consumerism. While making $he Hamilton was translating Duchamp’s notes from The Green Box. He wrote: ‘This relationship of woman and appliance is a fundamental theme of our culture; as obsessive and archetypal as the Western movie gun duel.’
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Marcel Duchamp, The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass) 1915–23, reconstruction by Richard Hamilton 1965–6, lower panel remade 1985
The Large Glass is a diagram depicting an ironic love-making machine of extraordinary complexity. The work is divided into two panels, depicting a machine bride above and her nine bachelors below. They communicate through strange devices and systems, conducting a bizarre robotic courtship ritual without any point of direct contact. Duchamp made The Large Glass with the aim to ‘avoid all contact with traditional painting’, hoping to distance himself from his subject. This reconstruction took Hamilton a year to make. He deliberately set out to construct The Large Glass as it was first conceived, avoiding any signs of aging. Duchamp came to London for the opening of his exhibition in 1966. He agreed to sign the reconstruction and the four glass studies produced by Hamilton, writing on their backs ‘pour copie conforme’ (‘for a faithful replica’).
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Art in this room
Marcel Duchamp, Richard Hamilton
Nine malic moulds
1914–5, reconstruction by Richard Hamilton 1965
Marcel Duchamp
The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors Even (The Green Box)
1934
Richard Hamilton, Marcel Duchamp
Sieves
1965, reconstruction by Richard Hamilton 1965
Richard Hamilton, Marcel Duchamp
Oculist Witnesses
1966, reconstruction by Richard Hamilton 1966
Richard Hamilton
The Passage of the Bride
1998–9
Richard Hamilton
$he
1958–61
Marcel Duchamp
The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass)
1915–23, reconstruction by Richard Hamilton 1965–6, lower panel remade 1985
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Richard Hamilton, Marcel Duchamp
Glider containing a water mill (in neighbouring metals)
1913–5, reconstruction by Richard Hamilton 1966