Fashion-plate (L. 76)

Richard Hamilton's interest in the artificial and cosmetic language of contemporary popular culture towards the end of the 1960s lead him to create Fashion Plates, a series of twelve collaged paintings made in 1969, and the present work, made the following year. They were all created against the same background, a black and white photograph of a photographic studio belonging to his friend, Tony Evans. Using photographs taken from Vogue, Harper's Bazaar and Queen, as well as paint or even make-up, Hamilton constructed a sequence of images displaying a variety of fashion styles. His piece-by-piece assemblage, coming into being within the spot-lit white void at the centre of the empty photographic studio, mirrored the process of construction that goes into the creation of magazine covers. Hamilton's use of partial and disparate images not only revealed the artifice and manufactured nature of the image, but also created a newer, more powerful, striking and perhaps truer fashion image - one that is pure style and cosmetic surface, far removed from its starting point.