A Celebration Of Hamilton’s Cinematic Influences

NEW HAVEN — Richard Hamilton is one of the most influential figures in British art. Although best known for his leading role in the evolution of Pop Art, Hamilton, now 81, has consistently created art which is intelligent, provocative, underpinned by art-historical tradition, yet resonantly contemporary.

Yale Center for British Art is celebrating Hamilton’s sustained investigation of the complex relationship between art and consumer culture, a project that dates back to the artist’s groundbreaking 1959 lecture “Glorious Technicolor, Breathtaking Cinemascope and Stereophonic Sound.”

In addition to a major retrospective, “Richard Hamilton: Prints and Multiples, 1939-2004,” the museum will also be presenting a free film series for the next three months. Each of the films have either directly influenced works in the exhibition or relate to them thematically.

All screenings are free an open to the public. Early arrival is being suggested as seating in YCBA’s Lecture Hall is limited to 200.

Screenings begin at 2 unless noted.

The series continues on March 13, the film will be How to Marry a Millionaire (1953), directed by Jean Negulesco (not rated, 95 minutes). Lauren Bacall, Betty Grable and Marilyn Monroe star in the first Hollywood comedy to be filmed in Cinemascope. The film influenced Hamilton’s 1965 screenprint “My Marilyn.”

The following weekend, on March 20, Richard Lester’s A Hard Day’s Night (1964, rated G, 87 minutes), will run. In 1968, when Hamilton was commissioned to design the cover for The Beatles album, he proposed that it should be plain white, and used personal photographs given to him by the band members to design and accompanying poster.

The cult movie Performance (1970, rated R and with a running tie of 105 minutes) is a penetrating, disturbing look into the dark underside of Swinging London. Starring Mick Jagger, the film being featured on March 27 is about a gangster hiding in the decrepit mansion of a former reclusive rock star and exchanging identities with him. Richard Hamilton’s print, Swinging London, which was inspired by the 1967 arrest of Jagger and art dealer Robert Fraser, is on view in the exhibition.

Also on March 27 the museum will offer a showing at 4 pm of Sleep (1963, not rated, 42 minutes). This will be a rare opportunity to see the short version of the extraordinary five-hour film made by Andy Warhol, who was a contemporary of Richard Hamilton.

Consisting of six separate shots of the nude figure of sleeping poet John Giorno, Sleep was shot at 24 frames per second but projected at 16, resulting in a slow-motion effect.

On April 3, American Graffiti (1973, rated PG, 110 minutes) celebrates the car – the ultimate object of consumer desire of the 1950s and a source of particular fascination for Hamilton, who explored the aesthetic possibilities of the automobile in a series of works, including “Hommage a Chrysler Corp.” (1957).

On April 17, Ulysses (1967, not rated, 132 minutes) will be screened. The epic reportedly has fascinated Hamilton since he first “read and reread” the modernist masterpiece in 1946. Over the course of his long career he has made a series of prints inspired by the novel.

Heads (1969, not rated, 34 minutes, made shortly after director Peter Gidal arrived in London, will be shown on April 24. Heads reflects the director’s admiration for Screen Test, Andy Warhol’s film portraits of New York’s beau monde of the early sixties. The “heads” featured in the movie include those of Richard Hamilton, David Hockney, Francis Bacon, and Claes Oldenburg.

Also on April 24 the museum will show Love is the Devil (1998, not rated, 90 minutes). This screening will begin at 2:45.

In 1969 Hamilton invited his friend, the painter Francis Bacon, to photograph him with a Polaroid camera. He used one of the photographs as a basis for his print, “A portrait of the artist by Francis Bacon.” Love is the Devil probes the life of Bacon, one of the most acclaimed painters of the 20th Century.

The series will conclude on May 1 with Bloody Sunday (2002, rated R, 107 minutes). Since the early 1980s Hamilton has examined the complex subject of the Troubles in Northern Ireland in a series of paintings and prints. Paul Greengrass’s powerful film depicts the tragic events of the protest march in Derry, Northern Ireland, on January 30, 1972 – a day since memorialized as “Bloody Sunday.”