Focus on Just what is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing? and explain the Authorship.
In 2006, artist John McHale's son, John McHale Jr., said that his father claimed he was the creator of the image, having provided the original measured design and iconic material for the collage, including the magazines from which much of the collage was assembled. McHale said that the source material was his, sent to Hamilton from Yale University, where McHale was studying, and that Hamilton's role was simply "mechanical" cutting out and pasting according to McHale's design.
In response, Hamilton said this was "absurd. The collage has been widely reproduced over the last fifty years and my authorship was never, to my knowledge, contested by John McHale Sr. when he was alive." Hamilton said that McHale provided him with a rough layout for six pages for the This is Tomorrow exhibition catalogue, but he only used two of them, and the other pages, including this collage, were created by himself; the American magazines that provided the images were from the collection of Magda and Frank Cordell, and the images were cut out by Hamilton's wife, Terry O'Reilly, and Magda Cordell.Magda Cordell has said that "While Richard, of course, put together the well-known poster collage for the group (Just what is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing?), some of the material in that collage came from John McHale's files, and both Terry Hamilton and I helped gather the images. We often looked for material in the studio John and I shared. Sometimes when I look at that poster, I think it looks a bit like the sitting room in Cleveland Square where our studio was, but this may be only my imagination".
Yale University Frank Cordell John McHale Magda collage