Portrait of Hugh Gaitskill as a Famous Monster of Filmland 1964

Richard Hamilton painted this uncanny portrait of Hugh Gaitskill in an unknown year, and with unknown materials. The process here is anything but concealed, as the surface texture is built up with layers of color, almost like a collage, or a face made of translucent panes of glass. There's something gruesome in the way the face seems to be falling apart, as though it's been assembled from mismatched parts. Look how the artist contrasts the cool, almost corpse-like blues and pinks on the left with the yellowish hues on the right, which have a sickly, decaying quality. That single tear amplifies the sense of emotional breakdown. You can see the ghost of Francis Bacon lurking in the shadows, the way Hamilton deploys color to psychologically distort the human form. But here, the monster is not an external force, but something internal, as if the subject is being eaten away from within.