Fathers of Pop - ACE085.5

Film posters and billboards, cinema frontages. Banham and Del Rienzo on blockbusters of the period. Del Rienzo believes that these films’ technical competence was what attracted the attention of members of the Independent Group. Extract from The Forbidden Planet (1956). Alloway talking about his reaction to the film. Banham VO photograph of a cinema queue, on their liking for wide-screen and saturated colour. Extract from Garden of Evil (1954). Alloway accepting his description as "the man who liked bad films". Del Renzio on Kiss Me Deadly (1955); extract. Hamilton on irony, and the fact that Kiss Me Deadly didn’t take itself seriously. Banham with the Cadillac. Car advertising. Alloway believes the Group developed a very wide-ranging aesthetic, not just one based in traditional fine arts. Hamilton believes the critics and academics in the Group were the most outspoken, while the practitioners were less articulate. Alloway on Hamilton’s contribution to the movement; he was more interested in the painter’s iconography than the paintings themselves. Hamilton writing about his own Hommage à Chrysler Corp and its influences. Alloway again on Hamilton’s iconography.