How to read a modern painting

Published on Friday 18 May 2007 01:13

11: THE CITIZEN

BY RICHARD HAMILTON, 1981-3, OIL ON CANVAS, TATE COLLECTION, LONDON

THE image that provided the impetus for The Citizen arose from Richard Hamilton's habit of setting up a still camera in front of the television screen in order to record the unexpected. "By chance, in 1980, I was struck by a scene in a TV documentary about republican prisoners in the H blocks... [a] film was shown of men 'on the blanket'... It was a strange image of human dignity in the midst of self-created squalor and it was endowed with the mythic power most often associated with art. It manifested the noble spirit of Irish patriotism having retreated (or was it pushed?) into its own excreta."

Despite the simplicity of Hamilton's initial response to his chosen image, it acquired many new layers of meaning as the work progressed. Most importantly it made new links with referential material already present in his work. Hamilton had long been fascinated by Irish history and with the complex, figural way in which it is woven into the fabric of James Joyce's "modern" Homeric novel Ulysses. He had first conceived of making paintings after Ulysses in 1947 and made a number of drawings with this objective in mind. One such study, was of the "Horne's House" episode; he returned to this same subject in a pen-and-wash drawing of 1981.

The first Christ-like figure, reminiscent of the Citizen, occurs in these drawings. It is a reference to Finn MacCool, the part-legendary poet and patriotic leader of the Fianna, the band of Irish warriors which gave its name to the Fenian Society, or the Irish Republican Brotherhood, a secret organisation dedicated to achieving a united Ireland by violent and/or revolutionary means. Hamilton's reference is not as one-sided as it first appears. MacCool figures in the "Cyclops" episode of Ulysses as the loud-mouthed, monocular giant nicknamed "The Citizen", whose "one-eyed crudity" disturbs the gentle, peace-loving Bloom in Barny Kiernan's bar. Hamilton's portrayal of "The Citizen" intends even-handedness by balancing the mythologically charged, MacCool-like image of the "blanket protester" and hunger striker, Hugh Rooney, with a dose of Joycian obliquity.

• Jon Thompson's How To Read a Modern Painting is published by Thames & Hudson, 19.95. To order a copy for just 17.95 (including P&P in the UK) call 08450 585878 with credit card details, quoting "The Artist Offer". Allow up to 14 days for delivery. Offer is subject to availability.