Screenprint on paper
Tate Collection
Works with images
General Collection
Rose and Chris Prater
Collection
<a href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/richard-hamilton-1244" aria-label="More by Richard Hamilton" data-gtm-name="header_link_artist" data-gtm-destination="page--artist">Richard Hamilton</a>
Interior
Presented by Rose and Chris Prater through the Institute of Contemporary Prints 1975
abstraction
actions: postures and motions
adults
architecture
bookcase
chair
colour
contrast
desk
domestic
electrical appliances
emotions, concepts and ideas
fine arts and music
flower
formal qualities
furnishings
geometric
history
interior - non-specific
interiors
modernist
non-representational
objects
people
periods and styles
photographic
picture
plants and flowers
standing
television
universal concepts
vase
vessels and containers
woman
<p>Hamilton claimed that any interior is 'a set of anachronisms, a museum, with the lingering residues of decorative styles that an inhabited space collects.' In this print, he contrasts an elaborately decorated interior with uncluttered coloured planes reminiscent of modernist architecture and design. The clash of styles is also reflected in his combination of painting with silkscreen printing, a technique associated with commercial art that allowed the direct transfer of photographic images onto canvas.</p><p><em>Gallery label, September 2004</em></p>
paper print screenprint
1 July 2003 – 15 February 2004
2004-02-15
4 August 2003 – 26 October 2003
2003-10-26
2003-08-04
Instituto Tomie Ohtake (Sao Paulo, Brazil)
16 October 2003 – 15 February 2004
2004-02-15
2003-10-16
Paco Imperial (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)
2003-07-01
A Bigger Splash: British Art from Tate 1960-2003
Tate partnerships & programmes
2 June 2011 – 15 February 2012
2012-02-15
2 June 2011 – 15 February 2012
2012-02-15
2011-06-02
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2011-06-02
Richard Hamilton Interiors
Collection based display
1 May 2023 – 19 May 2024
2024-05-19
1 May 2023 – 19 May 2024
2024-05-19
2023-05-01
Tate Britain (London, UK)
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/
2023-05-01
Richard Hamilton
Collection based display
Interior
image: 495 × 638 mm
Presented by <a href="/search?gid=999999979" data-gtm-name="tombstone_link_bequest" data-gtm-destination="list-page--search-results">Rose and Chris Prater</a> through the Institute of Contemporary Prints 1975
<div class="text">
<p>The print <i>Interior </i>belongs to a group of works based on a 1948 film still that Hamilton discovered by chance. Hamilton was teaching art at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne when he found a still from the film <i>Shockproof </i>(1949, director Douglas Sirk, screenplay by Samuel Fuller) lying on a classroom floor. The artist was struck by the carefully arranged composition of the still, photographed in a specially constructed set and explained:</p>
<p class="cttext">
</p><blockquote>Everything in the photograph converged on a girl in a ‘new look’ coat who stared out slightly to right of camera. A very wide-angle lens must have been used because the perspective seemed distorted; but the disquiet of the scene was due to two other factors. It was a film set, not a real room, so wall surfaces were not explicitly conjoined; and the lighting came from several different sources. Since the scale of the room had not become unreasonably enlarged, as one might expect from the use of a wide-angle lens, it could be assumed that false perspective had been introduced to counteract its effect – yet the foreground remained emphatically close and the recession extreme. All this contributed more to the foreboding atmosphere than the casually observed body lying on the floor, partially concealed by a desk. I made three collaged studies and two paintings based on this image of an interior – ominous, provocative, ambiguous; a confrontation with which the spectator is familiar yet not at ease.</blockquote>
<blockquote>(Quoted in <i>Collected Words</i>, p.61.)</blockquote>
<p>
<i>Interior </i>is a mirror-reversal screenprint version of the first of the three collages, <i>Interior study (a) </i>(Swindon Museum and Art Gallery), <i>(b)</i> and <i>(c) </i>(both private collections, London), that Hamilton created in 1964. Like his earlier image of an interior, the famous 1956 collage <i>Just what is it that makes today’s homes so different, so appealing?</i>(Kunsthalle Tübingen), <i>Interior study (a)</i> is made up of fragments sourced from magazines. Hamilton copied the floor-length curtain in the left side of the film still with a more stylistically up-to-date one in the new image. Because the print <i>Interior </i>is a mirror-reversal of <i>Interior study (a)</i>, this curtain is on the right side of the image. Hamilton replaced the image of the actress Patricia Knight (1915-2004) in the still with the image of an unknown woman dressed in 1960s fashion. She stands on a Turkish carpet, in front of a doorway leading to a dining room. Behind her a mirror in an ornate frame shows a reflection of a small framed artwork. More framed images hang on the wall to the mirror’s right. A bookshelf, a vase of flowers and a closed double door are partially concealed by a large square masquerading as a canvas propped on an easel. The square ‘canvas’ contains a photograph of a television showing a group of figures. To the left of the easel the image becomes increasingly abstract with a monotone area of yellow emerging from a corner of wooden parquet and bisected by a parallelogram of deep red, suggesting a rug and perhaps evoking the corpse lying on the floor in the original film still. Hamilton used this area of the study again in the painting <i>Interior II </i>(<a class="acno-pop" data-gtm-destination="page--artwork" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/hamilton-interior-ii-t00912" title="View the details of this artwork"><span>T00912</span></a>), where the floor-length curtain also features. In the foreground of the print, part of a wicker chair appears, out of focus, in front of a photograph of a large, old desk. Hamilton described the process of creating <i>Interior</i>:</p>
<p class="cttext">
</p><blockquote>The screenprint version of the <i>Interior</i> theme starts from a black and white photograph of one of a group of collages and colour is added to give a pseudo-photographic effect of half-tone colour reproduction. I made colour separations by hand, using ready-made mechanical tints. In parts the techniques are revealed for what they are by removing the overlying black screen. The general quality of collage, the dominant method of the studies and paintings on the subject, is maintained with this use of fragments of evenly dotted cellophane, Zip-a-tone, Plastitone, Cellutint and other brands. </blockquote>
<blockquote>(Quoted in <i>Collected Words</i>, p.89.)</blockquote>
<p>
<i>Interior </i>was preceded by <i>Interior (state)</i>, 1964 (printed in an edition of four) which is virtually identical apart from a picture-filled area of wall on the left side of the image that the artist partially covered and abstracted in the later version. Hamilton and Chris Prater screenprinted <i>Interior </i>on Crisbrook paper using eight stencils at Kelpra Studio, London. The print was produced in an edition of fifty plus an unknown number of artist’s and printer’s proofs and published by Editions Alecto, London. Tate’s copy is an artist’s proof.</p>
<p>
<b>Further reading</b>
<br/>
<i>Richard Hamilton: Collected Words 1953-1982</i>, London and New York, 1982, pp.61-3 and 89, reproduced p.89 in colour.<br/>Etienne Lullin, <i>Richard Hamilton: Prints and Multiples 1939-2002</i>, exhibition catalogue, Kunstmuseum Winterthur and Yale Center for British Art, New Haven 2003, pp.64-7, reproduced p.67 in colour.</p>
<p>Elizabeth Manchester<br/>September 2007</p>
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Summary
2016-10-24T00:00:00
summary
SHORT_TEXT
<p>Hamilton claimed that any interior is 'a set of anachronisms, a museum, with the lingering residues of decorative styles that an inhabited space collects.' In this <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/p/print" title="Glossary definition for 'Print'"><span>print</span></a>, he contrasts an elaborately decorated interior with uncluttered coloured planes reminiscent of <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/m/modernism" title="Glossary definition for 'Modernism'"><span>modernist</span></a> architecture and design. The clash of styles is also reflected in his combination of <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/p/painting" title="Glossary definition for 'Painting'"><span>painting</span></a> with silkscreen printing, a technique associated with commercial art that allowed the direct transfer of photographic images onto <a class="glossarylinktopopup" data-gtm-destination="article-page" data-gtm-name="body_text_link" href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/c/canvas" title="Glossary definition for 'Canvas'"><span>canvas</span></a>.</p>
Display caption
2004-09-09T00:00:00
display-caption
DISPLAY_CAPTION
abstraction actions: postures and motions adults architecture bookcase chair colour contrast desk domestic electrical appliances emotions, concepts and ideas fine arts and music flower formal qualities furnishings geometric history interior - non-specific interiors modernist non-representational objects people periods and styles photographic picture plants and flowers standing television universal concepts vase vessels and containers woman