Fathers of Pop - ACE085.4

Banham standing in front of the United Nations building in New York, the promise of a better future in city architecture. He points out that it was via media images, not from seeing the real thing, that the UN building turns up in one of Richard Hamilton’s works, Here is a Lush Situation (1948). Banham beside the car: though the size of American cars was an affront in a time of British austerity, it impressed with its fake crest, the "moderne" angel suggesting "supernatural speed", the "sexual bulges" of the chrome, overall design, the "science fiction imagery" on the dash-board. A few of Nigel Henderson’s photographs of post-war London shop-fronts. Del Renzio VO pages from women’s magazines on which he worked post-war. Del Renzio talking about Frank Cordell, an influential figure in popular music, the man behind Alma Cogan. Photos of Cordell, Cogan, street sign for Abbey Road, NW8, Cogan’s voice singing You Must Never Do a Tango with an Eskimo. The Cadillac pulls up outside Abbey Road Studios. Cordell lists other people he worked with, such as Max Bygraves and Frankie Vaughan, and is rather disparaging about the songs. Banham and Hamilton discussing the backgrounds of different sections of the Independent Group. Hamilton went from school at 14 to the Royal Academy at 16, to being an industrial draftsman for EMI. Architects were mainly middle class, painters were lower class. Alloway says they were mostly non-university people and thus had uninterrupted experience of the mass media. Post-war mass media was part of a period of technological expansion. Pop was linked to a pro-technology attitude. Banham and Hamilton agreeing that magazines and cinema were the nearest thing most people had to "live art".