Interior 1964

Richard Hamilton's "Interior" uses collage, photography, and printmaking to create a domestic scene that feels both familiar and strangely disjointed. It is not one thing, but a way of thinking through artmaking as process. The textures are all over the place, aren't they? You have the grainy quality of newsprint sitting alongside flat, bold areas of color, like that electric yellow rectangle cutting across the floor. It's these jarring juxtapositions that really grab me, that suggest a sense of unease or disruption lurking beneath the surface of everyday life. Look at how the image is fractured, with different perspectives and styles mashed together. There's a woman standing in a doorway, but the doorway itself seems to lead to another reality entirely. Hamilton’s really in dialogue with artists like Kurt Schwitters, who was another master of collage. It's like they're both asking: what happens when you take the world apart and put it back together in unexpected ways?