"A maker of  memorable images...Tom Phillips has a range of sympathy which goes beyond the Anglo-American gamut...he is a quintessentialist; a man who likes to reproduce complex and difficult subjects to a magic minimum." —John Russell,
The New York Times
Tom Phillips is a multi-talented artist whose central passion is language and whose genius lies in his ability to generate images that, while concerned with the structure of ideas, also convey a rich coherence of decoration, eloquence, and sensuality. These concerns have led him into opera, ballet, and filmmaking; he is also an accomplished composer and poet, and his achievements in the production of books and prints are renowned worldwide. He inspires strong, almost fanatical enthusiasm among a coterie of devotees. Published to coincide with a touring retrospective exhibition by the Royal Academy,
Tom Phillips: Works and Texts
is a discriminating survey of over twenty years of the artist's oeuvre, including some of his very latest pieces. Included are pages from his past books:
Dante's Inferno
(Thames & Hudson, 1985) and A
Humument
(Thames & Hudson, 1987). Also reproduced are such representative works as
Conjectured Images: Mappin Art Gallery,
a series of paintings that reconstruct an entire art gallery from an old postcard;
Curriculum Vitae I-XXII
;
Terminal Grey Paintings
; and many of his images from
A TV Dante
. Illustrated in color throughout, this is a tribute to a living artist whose work remains as fresh and challenging as when it was first produced.