Tom Phillips: Works and Texts

Rating:
Summary: A fine introduction to England's most original living artist
Review: Tom Phillips lives in London and has done so for many years. He is a prolific artist, but what is most impressive about his oevre is the mix of styles and mediums he uses in his art. Probably the most consistent quality is his acute sense of form - not in the artistic sense, but in a more technical sense, a bit like a structuralist, but with more artistic soul. His classic piece is the book the Humument comprising of the adapted pages of an old Victorian novel, wherein each painted page tells its own original story independent of the original words, and yet somehow works to create together a part of a new whole. Phillips has illustrated Dante's Inferno, writes music, creates sculptures - such as the miami beach piece, which playfully creates a new word game from art. His latest work is an illustrated guide to the 20th century through the picture postcard. All in all, a marvellous man and deservedly celebrated in this book. And as an artistic structuralist, a man after my own heart.