JUST WHAT IS IT THAT MAKES TODAY'S HOMES SO DIFFERENT?

© R. Hamilton. All Rights Reserved, DACS 2023.

JUST WHAT IS IT THAT MAKES TODAY'S HOMES SO DIFFERENT? 1993

Richard Hamilton (1922 – 2011)

Details

Dimension
16.7 X 26.7 CM
Media
COLOUR LASER PRINT
Accession number
P6179

Summary

A limited edition of 5000 signed and numbered prints produced for the BBC programme QED shown on 21st April 1993.

Richard Hamilton’s famous fifties collage Just what it is that makes today’s homes so different, so appealing?was made with normal collage techniques by cutting and pasting parts of the pictures from magazines in one day. He began by making a list of topics to be presented in the image: man, woman, humanity, domestic appliance, food, cars, cinema, TV, telephone, comics, tape recorder, history and space.

The QED print updates the images for the nineties following the same list but using new computer technologies to scan picture elements electronically from a range of sources such as magazines, photographic prints, transparencies, and even a circuit board. Other details were ‘grabbed’ directly from video tape or shot with a Kodak DCS 200 digital camera and transferred into a computer. A variety of proprietary software prepared the material for transfer into a Quantel Paintbox to be masked, cut out, resized, put into perspective and pasted into the image. The process, which included learning to use the new technology, too many weeks.

Collage elements ‘acquired’ electronically by an Apple Macintosh computer from an Agfa flatbed scanner, a Kodak DCS 200 digital camera and video ‘grabbing’ programme. Assembly and image processing completed on a Quantel ‘Desk Top’ Paintbox. The image is printed directly from a Quarda 700 to a Canon CLC 500 colour printer using EFI’s ‘Cachet’ Software and a Fiery laser controller in contone mode on Mellotex paper.

Explanatory text accompanying the print.<p

Glossary

  • Collage

    The two-dimensional form of assemblage made by affixing paper, card, photographs, fabric and other objects to a flat surface. It is often combined with painting and drawing techniques. This technique was first introduced by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque in 1912 during their phase of synthetic cubism.

  • Edition

    All copies of a book, print, portfolio, sculpture, etc., issued or produced at one time or from a single set of type. Printed works can be made in an edition of between one and many thousands of copies. With most printing techniques the plate or screen will become worn if very many prints are made, so to maintain quality (and exclusivity) editions of original prints are usually kept below one hundred copies and normally average between thirty and fifty copies. Prints made up of several different plates can be extremely complicated and time-consuming to edition, so in these cases editions are kept low for practical reasons. Sculptural editions are a set of cast sculptures taken from the same mould or master. These editions are usually much lower, consisting of no more than six casts. Though each cast in an edition might have a lower value than a unique piece, it may be a more effective way of offsetting costs of an expensive process such as bronze casting.

  • Video

    Images recorded on videotape or on optical disc to be viewed on television screens, or projected onto screens. The medium through which these images are recorded and displayed.