Prints and Drawings Room
View by appointment- Artist
- Richard Hamilton 1922–2011
- Medium
- Etching and aquatint on paper
- Dimensions
- Image: 300 × 196 mm
support: 375 × 277 mm - Collection
- Tate
- Acquisition
- Purchased 1982
- Reference
- P07657
Catalogue entry
P07657 Self-portrait 1951
Etching with aquatint and roulette 11 3/4 × 7 3/4 (300 × 196) on paper 14 3/4 × 10 7/8 (375 × 277), printed by the artist at the Slade School of Art, not editioned
Inscribed ‘Richard Hamilton’ b.l. and ‘Self-portrait’
Purchased from the artist (Grant-in-Aid) 1982
Lit: Hamilton no.42, repr. p.35
This print combines two aspects of Hamilton's work: his use of autonomous marks, the making of which in itself determines the form of the work, and his use of biological - i.e. natural - subject matter, drawn from Thompson's observation of the way things grow, as a visual language. Its third important aspect is described by Richard Morphet: ‘Hamilton's mouth is a sea-urchin, his ear a shell, his tie a flat worm regenerating after section, and one side of his face is defined by a bull-sperm. The Arcimboldesque principle points up the fact that in all Hamilton's Self-portraits ... the artist becomes one with the substance of his current obsessions’ (Morphet, p.23).
Published in:
The Tate Gallery 1982-84: Illustrated Catalogue of Acquisitions, London 1986
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