Photographs without Frontiers: Rauschenberg, Warhol, Hamilton and Photography

Abstract

This paper is concerned with the roles played by photographs in the creation of fresh images. After touching on the impact made by Northern European paintings and prints on the development of Renaissance art in Italy, it examines broadly the usefulness of works of art on paper – including photographs – in disseminating local styles and subject matter. The body of the paper examines how Robert Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol and Richard Hamilton appropriated photographic images in the 1950s and 1960s, and asks to what extent such borrowed images continued to resonate when imported into different milieus. In essence, the paper asks whether those images continued to ‘pierce’, ‘prick’ or ‘bruise’ the viewer in their new environments – to borrow terms Roland Barthes employed to characterise the effect of the punctum. The paper also suggests that on occasion the new work of art may supersede the regional nature of its source materials, giving the originating images a global currency that transcends their origins.