This video records a lecture given by British artist Richard Hamilton at the École des beaux-arts in Bordeaux on October 30, 1996. Born in 1922, Hamilton was a member of the Independent Group in London in the 1950s, when its shows at the Institute of Contemporary Arts gave birth to British Pop Art. His work at the time was linked to the pioneering theories of critic Lawrence Alloway on the relationship between art and popular culture, based on a principle of non-hierarchical equivalence. Hamilton’s vast oeuvre, however, cannot be reduced to this one seminal period. From his Duchamp-inspired pieces to computer-based work (he himself designed two computers in the 1980s), via his collaborations with Dieter Roth in the 1970s, Hamilton is one of the major artists of the contemporary era. This lecture is therefore a precious historical record.

Invited to speak by Jean Sabrier and Guadalupe Echeverria, he is introduced and interviewed by Michel Aphesbero, a teacher at the École des beaux-arts in Bordeaux. The video was edited for this issue of Rosa B by Véronique Lamare.