Richard Hamilton
    An important British pop artist that was a member of The Independent Group (or London Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA)). "But Hamilton . . . was no simple critic of popular culture in the age of mass consumption" (Crow 45)

Just what is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing? (1956*)

    Hamilton's collage parodies the manufactured and mass-produced quality of postwar America.  He emphasizes the desire for the inflation of body parts--muscles and breasts--and even vacuum-cleaner hoses.  In the background, outside the window, is an advertisement for the blackface singer Al Jolson's The Jazz Singer; although Hamilton admired the technology and "big business" it represented, it was still a form of "racial hypocrisy" to him.