Richard Hamilton (B. 1922)

This image is based on a 70 mm. colour negative from the film White Christmas, showing Bing Crosby walking through a hotel lobby. Beginning in 1967, Hamilton explored the theme in two prints and a painting, all of which mimicked the colour reversal of the original. Shortly after making the print, Hamilton wrote that it was 'a return of the subject to positive. When the major piece of the group (a large painting) was completed I had it photographed and from that large transparency a colour negative was made, with some difficulty. The painting itself is in negative, so a negative of the painting becomes positive. This positive/negative has been printed, by collotype, to the same size as the silkscreen print of the subject (for which I regard the collotype as a companion piece) with many silkscreen workings on top in simulation of graphic manipulation.'