(1952-5)
A radical, informally associated group of young British artists, architects, and writers, the Independent Group (IG) questioned the assumptions of Modernism through its interests in contemporary American popular culture, the aesthetics of expendability. It has also been seen as laying down the foundations for the emergence of Pop. However, recent researchers into the activities of the IG have established that they were by no means as coherent as a number of the Group's members have subsequently suggested, rather the informal gatherings of a relatively small group interested in a range of contemporary cultural concerns. Leading figures within this gathering included writer, architectural, and design historian and critic Reyner Banham, fine artists Richard Hamilton and Eduardo Paolozzi, critic Lawrence Alloway, architectural writer John McHale, photographer Nigel Henderson, and the architects Alison and Peter Smithson. The IG was centred on the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in London whose president was Herbert Read, whose aesthetic principles were immersed in the Modernist outlook of the interwar avant-garde. The first informal gatherings of the IG took place in 1952, initiated by a presentation by Paolozzi of advertisements and images drawn from American popular culture, followed by a talk by the philosopher A. I. Ayer and a discussion on kinetic art. Banham became the Group's convenor later in the year, bringing into focus issues of science and technology. In 1953 an exhibition on the Parallel of Life and Art was mounted at the ICA, a show drawing on a wide range of photographic images opposed to the aestheticism of the establishment and involving a number of those connected with the IG, namely Henderson, Paolozzi, and the Smithsons. There were further seminar series, on a more organized footing, that ran in 1953-4 and 1955, the first convened by Banham and the second by McHale and Alloway, which included discussion of aesthetics and Italian product design, fashion and fashion magazines, Detroit automobile styling, and commercial music. Richard Hamilton also organized the 1955 Man, Machine and Motion, a photographic exhibition that paralleled some of the concerns of the seminar discussion. The last meeting of the Group took place in the summer of 1955, the time at which Lawrence Alloway was appointed as assistant director of the ICA. However, the IG heavily influenced the This Is Tomorrow exhibition held at the Whitechapel Gallery, London, in 1956, which included a proto-Pop environment by Hamilton, McHale, and architect John Voelker, a visual communication collaboration by Alloway, Tony del Renzio, and Geoffrey Holroyd, and the Patio & Pavilion by the Smithsons, Paolozzi, and Henderson.
