Just What Is It That Makes Today’s Homes So Different, So Appealing?, 1956, Richard Hamilton

”The main impetus for British Pop came out of discussions between writers like Lawrence Alloway and artists such as Richard Hamilton. This group put on a pioneering exhibition in 1956 called This Is Tomorrow - a quasi-anthropological, semi-ironic, but wholly enthusiastic look at the mass imagery of the early electronic age. Hamilton exhibited a small but densely prophetic collage called Just What Is It That Makes Today’s Homes So Different, So Appealing? In it, the word ‘Pop’ makes its first appearance in art, emblazoned on the hilarious phallic sucker the muscle-man is holding. Moreover, all the chief image sources of later Pop art are compressed into the collage: a literally framed Young Romance comic on the wall (Lichtenstein), the packaged ham on the table (Rosenquist), the TV set, brands like the Ford logo on the table lamp, the movie theatre with its cut-off kneeling Al Jolson billboard visible through the window, the brand-new vacuum cleaner and tape recorder…and the Health and Beauty couple displaying their lats, pects and tits as product.”

- The Shock Of The New, Robert Hughes