Extract from a conversation between Tim
Green and Jeffrey Dennis at Tate Britain's Painting Conservation
Department, London April 2005
TG: [moving to Richard Hamilton's 'Hommage à Chrysler Corp' 1957]
So this has just come back from the tour of The Sixties Show.
This painting; when Hamilton made it it he used, in this collaged
section, a photograph printed on 'airmail' photographic paper
very thin and in the developing it probably wasn't
washed sufficiently. We had invited Hamilton in to advise us on
reframing the painting, and he immediately said 'You have to
replace that element it's completely out of synch with the
rest of the painting!'
JD: It had continued to darken over time, exposed to light?
TG: Not darkened bleached: so it looked like a Victorian sepia print. So we had a long dialogue with him about how to tackle this. Eventually Hamilton brought in a new print for us to work from. We didn't want to take off the original collaged element. We wanted just to place a new element on top of it in a completely reversible way.
JD: An extra layer laminated on.
TG: I used cigarette paper because that's the lightest paper I could acquire.
JD: But surely they would have to be huge 'Rizlas'?!
TG: Just by chance, in the Paper
Conservation Department they had a one hundred metre roll of cigarette
paper.....
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