1/6th of a lobby (1984)
Collotype in 6 colours and screenprint from 18 stencils in 25 colours on Ivorex paper
15 x 16 cm
Note
Ceiling detail, 1/6th cut-out from a print called Lobby.
In the early 1970s Hamilton received a postcard from Dorothy Iannone (showing the lobby of the Hotel Europa, Berlin.) Fascinated by the perspectival tricks produced by the mirrored columns and geometrically patterned carpet, Hamilton made a collaged watercolor (1974–75) after the postcard, which in turn became the basis for a print nearly ten years later. As Richard Hamilton said, the lobby’s rather banal, modern decoration and strange emptiness reminded him of the setting for Jean-Paul Sartre’s existentialist drama Huis Clos (No Exit; 1944), which takes place in a hotel’s public space, “a metaphor for purgatory, the limbo in which we await transit to another condition. (Source: The Met)
Below the whole print (1984). Tate Collection.
