Cecil Beaton, Richard Hamilton and the Queer, Transatlantic Origins of Pop Art

Abstract

Significant aspects of American pop art are now understood as participating in the queer visual culture of New York in the 1960s. This article suggests something similar can be said of the British origins of pop art, not only at the time of, but also prior to, the work of the Independent Group in post-war London. The interwar practices of collage of the celebrity photographer Cecil Beaton prefigured those of Richard Hamilton in that they displayed a distinctively British interpretation of male muscularity and female glamour in the United States. (Homo)eroticism in products of American popular culture such as advertising fascinated not only Beaton but also a number of members of the Independent Group, including Hamilton. The origins of pop art should, therefore, be situated in relation not only to American consumer culture but also to the ways in which that culture appeared, from certain British viewpoints, to be queerly intriguing.