Tom Phillips (artist)
Encyclopedia
Tom Phillips CBE
R.A. (born 24 May 1937) is an English
artist. He was born in London
, where he continues to work. He is a painter
, printmaker
and collagist
.
, London, the younger of two sons. His mother ran a ten-roomed boarding house and his father speculated in cotton futures. His family called him Tom.
In 1940 the cotton market collapsed and the family had to sell their home. Phillips' father went to work in Aberystwyth
, leaving his wife to run a small boarding house in London. After the war the family finances improved and they were able to holiday annually in France
and Germany
. His parents began to buy short leasehold properties as investments and although these did not yield the return that they wished his mother did buy the freehold of one house, which would later become her son's studio and home.
From 1942 to 1947 Phillips attended Bonneville Road Primary School in Clapham. Whilst he was there he claims that he "learned the word artist and discovered that an artist is someone who does not have to put his paints away, so decided to become one". Although he enjoyed school he was noted his fascination with drawing and his refusal to conform. His mother recalled him buying a platform ticket
every Sunday and taking long railway journeys when he was just eleven. In that year he progressed to Henry Thornton Grammar School, Clapham, where he developed his love of music, playing violin and bassoon in the school orchestra and singing solo baritone in school concerts and stage events. In 1954 he exhibited paintings for the first time, in an open art show on the railings of the Thames Embankment
. A year later, at seventeen, he won a travelling scholarship to France, and lived there for three months. His mother remembers him returning to London with a sack of horse bones from the first World War, but more significantly he bought himself a piano and started to teach himself to play. In 1957 he became a founder member of the Philharmonia Chorus.
From 1958 to 1960 Phillips read English Literature
and Anglo Saxon
at St Catherine's College, Oxford
. He attended life drawing classes at The Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art
, acted in plays and designed and illustrated the Isis magazine. Upon graduation he taught Art
, Music
and English
at Aristotle Road School, Brixton
, London. He also attended evening classes in life drawing (under Frank Auerbach
), and sculpture
at Camberwell College of Arts
, where he became a full-time student in 1961. When he graduated in 1964 his work was selected for that year's Young Contemporaries Exhibition in London and in the following year the AIA Galleries in London exhibited his first one-man show. While studying at Camberwell Phillips married Jill, and their daughter Ruth was born in 1964. Their second child was a son, Leo.
Phillips became a teacher at Ipswich School of Art, where one of his students was Brian Eno
, who would become a life-long friend. He soon moved to teaching Liberal Studies at Walthamstow Polytechnic where he met the pianist John Tilbury
and participated in improvisation concerts at several polytechnics
. His first musical composition was Four Pieces for John Tilbury.
The year of 1966 was important for Phillips. He exhibited in the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition
for the first time, started work on A Humument, and began collaborating with Brian Eno. When Cornelius Cardew
founded the Scratch Orchestra
, its constitution was drafted in Phillips' garden in Bath (where he had become a teacher at the Bath Academy of Art) and he participated in most of the concerts until he became disillusioned with its politicisation. In 1968 he moved to Wolverhampton
to teach at Wolverhampton School of Art, and he had a second one-man exhibition, at the Ikon Gallery
, Birmingham. He wrote the opera Irma in the following year and started the Terminal Grey series of paintings.
Throughout the 1970s his works were exhibited widely in one-man shows and collections. After a period as a visiting tutor at the Art School in Kassel
, Germany
he abandoned teaching and took his first trip to Africa. In 1973 he began the 20 Sites n Years photographic project. His first significant publication, Works/Texts I, was published in 1975 by Hansjörg Mayer and his first retrosepctive exhibition toured Europe. This was also the year that he met Marvin and Ruth Sackner, who were to become his patrons and founded an archive in Miami to house most of his work. The following year saw the completion of the privately printed edition of A Humument, which had been published in ten sections since 1971.
In 1978 Brian Eno produced a recording of Irma for Obscure Records
directed by Gavin Bryars
with a cast including Howard Skempton and Phillips himself. Phillips began contributing regular reviews to the Times Literary Supplement (now TLS). At the beginning of the 1980s he designed a series of tapestries for his old Oxford college and he returned to portraiture with a Portrait of Pella Erskine-Tulloch (the bookbinder who bound Phillips' favourite version of A Humument in three volumes). Erskine-Tulloch would become the subject of a series of weekly sittings which he described as "Pella on Sunday". He had moved out of the family home at 102 Grove Lane and moved back into his studio at 57 Talfourd Road in Peckham. A man with a great pleasure in habit, he would lunch every Tuesday in the Choumert Café on Choumert Road. His private limited edition of his own translation of Dante's Inferno
illustrated with his prints was published in 1983 and in 1984 he was elected a Royal Academician
. Peter Greenaway
and Phillips co-directed A TV Dante with John Gielgud
and Bob Peck
, which was broadcast on Channel 4
television in 1986. During this time he also collaborated with Malcolm Bradbury
, Adrian Mitchell
, Jake Auerbach
, Richard Minsky
and Heather McHugh
.
At the beginning of the 1990s Phillips painted portraits of the Monty Python
team and produced a glass screen and paintings for The Ivy restaurant
in London. He illustrated Plato's Symposium for the Folio Society
(for whom he would illustrate Waiting for Godot
in 1999), completed his Curriculum Vitae series of paintings and saw a new Works and Texts book published. In 1994 he went to Harvard as Artist in Residence at the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts
and published Merely Connect, which he had written with Salman Rushdie during a series of portrait sittings. With the move to a new studio in Bellenden Road and a change of ownership of the Choumert Café, Phillips began to lunch regularly opposite his studio at the Crossroads Café, where he could be found reading literary magazines through his blue-rimmed spectacles.
He curated the 1995 exhibition Africa: the Art of a Continent for the Royal Academy
and became their Chairman of Exhibitions. Phillips began to move into new areas in the mid 1990s: stage design, The Postcard Century for Thames & Hudson
(building on his passion for postcards), quilting, mud drawings and wire structures. All his old projects continued and he began illustrating Ulysses
. He also translated the libretto of Otello
while he was designing the English National Opera
production. In 1998 Largo Records released Six of Hearts, a CD of Phillips' songs and other music written since 1992 but this went out of print when the label failed in 2002.
By the late 1990s Phillips was an establishment figure in most aspects of the arts. He became a trustee
of the National Portrait Gallery, an Honorary Fellow of the London Institute, an Honorary Member of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters
and a Trustee of the British Museum
. He celebrated his fiftieth birthday by playing a game of cricket
with many of his friends at the Kennington Oval cricket ground. In 1995, he married the writer Fiona Maddocks, Music Critic of The Observer
.
In 2000 he designed lampposts, pavements, gates and arches for Southwark
Council's Peckham Renewal Project. Antony Gormley
, whose workshop adjoins Phillips' studio in Bellenden Road, Peckham, designed bollards for the same project and the work of both artists adorns that street.
Phillips was made a Commander of the British Empire
for services to the Arts in the 2002 Queen's Birthday Honours
list.
In 2006 Phillips exhibited six works in the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition
amongst them Colour Sudoku, furthermore, held a Micro-Retrospective (9 February - 23 April 2006) at the Ashmolean Museum
in Oxford.
: A Treated Victorian Novel. One day, Phillips went to a bookseller's with the express intention of buying a cheap book to use as the basis of an art project. He randomly purchased a novel called A Human Document by Victorian author William Hurrell Mallock
, and began a long project of creating art from its pages. He paints, collages or draws over the pages, leaving some of the text peeking through in serpentine bubble shapes, creating a "found" text with its own story, different from the original. Characters from Mallock's novel appear in the new story, but the protagonist is a new character named "Bill Toge", whose surname can only appear on pages which originally contained words like "together" or "altogether". Toge's story is a meditation on unrequited love and the struggle to create and appreciate art.
Several editions of A Humument have been published over the years, with more and more pages being revised each time. The project is ongoing, and future editions are expected.
Phillips has used the same technique (always with the Mallock source material) in many of his other works, including the illustration of his own translation of Dante
's Inferno
, (published in 1985). He is also fond of re-using images from postcard
s (which he avidly collects) as well as drawing stencil-style lettering, freehand. The melding of visual art with textual content is a hallmark of Phillips's work.
He also paints portrait
s (his portrait of Dame Iris Murdoch
is well known) and mural
s, and creates installation art
and sculpture
. He is a member of the Royal Academy
(since 1989) and, in 2003 designed a Royal Mint
commemorative five-pound coin for the 50th anniversary of the 1953 coronation of Queen Elizabeth II
. He is an opera
fan, and has composed an opera, Irma, using the Humument source material for the libretto. He also wrote the libretto for Heart of Darkness, a chamber opera with music by Tarik O'Regan
currently in development with American Opera Projects.
Phillips engages in other projects that challenge the viewer's perceptions of art, such as his ongoing project 20 Sites n Years, in which he photographs the same 20 spots in his studio's neighborhood, once a year. As the years go by, the viewer watches the neighborhood gradually change. Similarly, Phillips has done a series of paintings called Terminal Greys, consisting of simple cross-hatched bars of murky, grayish paint composed from the leftovers on his palette at the end of each work day. Since there are no aesthetic judgments on the artist's part in the creation of these works, they are virtually mechanical; the "art" could be said to lie in the conception of the work and not in the accidental "grey rainbow" appearance of the result.
He collaborated with film director Peter Greenaway
on A TV Dante, a television
miniseries
adaptation of the first eight cantos of the Inferno
.
Phillips has provided cover art for music albums including Starless and Bible Black
by King Crimson
(1974), Another Green World
by Brian Eno
(1975), and one of the sixteen portraits that form Peter Blake
's design for Face Dances
by The Who
(1981). His cover art for Dark Star
's Twenty Twenty Sound
used the same technique as The Humument, but using the album's lyrics as the source material.
He has also produced books about art including Music In Art and a study of African art.
Order of the British Empire
The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is an order of chivalry established on 4 June 1917 by George V of the United Kingdom. The Order comprises five classes in civil and military divisions...
R.A. (born 24 May 1937) is an English
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
artist. He was born in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, where he continues to work. He is a painter
Painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...
, printmaker
Printmaking
Printmaking is the process of making artworks by printing, normally on paper. Printmaking normally covers only the process of creating prints with an element of originality, rather than just being a photographic reproduction of a painting. Except in the case of monotyping, the process is capable...
and collagist
Collage
A collage is a work of formal art, primarily in the visual arts, made from an assemblage of different forms, thus creating a new whole....
.
Life
Trevor Thomas Phillips was born on 24 May 1937 in ClaphamClapham
Clapham is a district in south London, England, within the London Borough of Lambeth.Clapham covers the postcodes of SW4 and parts of SW9, SW8 and SW12. Clapham Common is shared with the London Borough of Wandsworth, although Lambeth has responsibility for running the common as a whole. According...
, London, the younger of two sons. His mother ran a ten-roomed boarding house and his father speculated in cotton futures. His family called him Tom.
In 1940 the cotton market collapsed and the family had to sell their home. Phillips' father went to work in Aberystwyth
Aberystwyth
Aberystwyth is a historic market town, administrative centre and holiday resort within Ceredigion, Wales. Often colloquially known as Aber, it is located at the confluence of the rivers Ystwyth and Rheidol....
, leaving his wife to run a small boarding house in London. After the war the family finances improved and they were able to holiday annually in France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
and Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
. His parents began to buy short leasehold properties as investments and although these did not yield the return that they wished his mother did buy the freehold of one house, which would later become her son's studio and home.
From 1942 to 1947 Phillips attended Bonneville Road Primary School in Clapham. Whilst he was there he claims that he "learned the word artist and discovered that an artist is someone who does not have to put his paints away, so decided to become one". Although he enjoyed school he was noted his fascination with drawing and his refusal to conform. His mother recalled him buying a platform ticket
Platform ticket
A platform ticket is a type of rail ticket issued by some railway systems, permitting the bearer to access the platforms of a railway station, but not to board and use any train services. It allows people to walk with their friends and loved ones all the way to the passenger car at stations where...
every Sunday and taking long railway journeys when he was just eleven. In that year he progressed to Henry Thornton Grammar School, Clapham, where he developed his love of music, playing violin and bassoon in the school orchestra and singing solo baritone in school concerts and stage events. In 1954 he exhibited paintings for the first time, in an open art show on the railings of the Thames Embankment
Thames Embankment
The Thames Embankment is a major feat of 19th century civil engineering designed to reclaim marshy land next to the River Thames in central London. It consists of the Victoria and Chelsea Embankment....
. A year later, at seventeen, he won a travelling scholarship to France, and lived there for three months. His mother remembers him returning to London with a sack of horse bones from the first World War, but more significantly he bought himself a piano and started to teach himself to play. In 1957 he became a founder member of the Philharmonia Chorus.
From 1958 to 1960 Phillips read English Literature
English literature
English literature is the literature written in the English language, including literature composed in English by writers not necessarily from England; for example, Robert Burns was Scottish, James Joyce was Irish, Joseph Conrad was Polish, Dylan Thomas was Welsh, Edgar Allan Poe was American, J....
and Anglo Saxon
Old English language
Old English or Anglo-Saxon is an early form of the English language that was spoken and written by the Anglo-Saxons and their descendants in parts of what are now England and southeastern Scotland between at least the mid-5th century and the mid-12th century...
at St Catherine's College, Oxford
St Catherine's College, Oxford
St Catherine's College, often called Catz, is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. Its motto is Nova et Vetera...
. He attended life drawing classes at The Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art
The Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art
The Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, known as The Ruskin, is an art school and research institute at the University of Oxford.Working collaboratively across two sites, the school provides undergraduate and postgraduate qualifications in the study and production of visual art...
, acted in plays and designed and illustrated the Isis magazine. Upon graduation he taught Art
Art
Art is the product or process of deliberately arranging items in a way that influences and affects one or more of the senses, emotions, and intellect....
, Music
Music
Music is an art form whose medium is sound and silence. Its common elements are pitch , rhythm , dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture...
and English
English studies
English studies is an academic discipline that includes the study of literatures written in the English language , English linguistics English studies is an academic discipline that includes the study of literatures written in the English language (including literatures from the U.K., U.S.,...
at Aristotle Road School, Brixton
Brixton
Brixton is a district in the London Borough of Lambeth in south London, England. It is south south-east of Charing Cross. The area is identified in the London Plan as one of 35 major centres in Greater London....
, London. He also attended evening classes in life drawing (under Frank Auerbach
Frank Auerbach
Frank Helmut Auerbach is a painter born in Germany although he has been a naturalised British citizen since 1947.-Biography:Auerbach was born in Berlin, the son of Max Auerbach, a patent lawyer, and Charlotte Nora Burchardt, who had trained as an artist...
), and sculpture
Sculpture
Sculpture is three-dimensional artwork created by shaping or combining hard materials—typically stone such as marble—or metal, glass, or wood. Softer materials can also be used, such as clay, textiles, plastics, polymers and softer metals...
at Camberwell College of Arts
Camberwell College of Arts
Camberwell College of Arts is a constituent college of the University of the Arts London, and is widely regarded as one of the world's foremost art and design institutions. It is located in Camberwell, South London, England, with two sites situated at Peckham Road and Wilson Road...
, where he became a full-time student in 1961. When he graduated in 1964 his work was selected for that year's Young Contemporaries Exhibition in London and in the following year the AIA Galleries in London exhibited his first one-man show. While studying at Camberwell Phillips married Jill, and their daughter Ruth was born in 1964. Their second child was a son, Leo.
Phillips became a teacher at Ipswich School of Art, where one of his students was Brian Eno
Brian Eno
Brian Peter George St. John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno , commonly known as Brian Eno or simply as Eno , is an English musician, composer, record producer, singer and visual artist, known as one of the principal innovators of ambient music.Eno studied at Colchester Institute art school in Essex,...
, who would become a life-long friend. He soon moved to teaching Liberal Studies at Walthamstow Polytechnic where he met the pianist John Tilbury
John Tilbury
John Tilbury is a British pianist. He is considered one of the foremost interpreters of Morton Feldman's music, and since 1980 has been a member of the free improvisation group AMM.- Early life and education :...
and participated in improvisation concerts at several polytechnics
Polytechnic (United Kingdom)
A polytechnic was a type of tertiary education teaching institution in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland. After the passage of the Further and Higher Education Act 1992 they became universities which meant they could award their own degrees. The comparable institutions in Scotland were...
. His first musical composition was Four Pieces for John Tilbury.
The year of 1966 was important for Phillips. He exhibited in the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition
Royal Academy summer exhibition
The Summer Exhibition is an open art exhibition held annually by the Royal Academy in Burlington House, Piccadilly in central London, England, during the summer months of June, July, and August...
for the first time, started work on A Humument, and began collaborating with Brian Eno. When Cornelius Cardew
Cornelius Cardew
Cornelius Cardew was an English experimental music composer, and founder of the Scratch Orchestra, an experimental performing ensemble. He later rejected the avant-garde in favour of a politically motivated "people's liberation music".-Biography:Cardew was born in Winchcombe, Gloucestershire...
founded the Scratch Orchestra
Scratch Orchestra
The Scratch Orchestra was an experimental musical ensemble founded in the spring of 1969 by Cornelius Cardew, Michael Parsons and Howard Skempton....
, its constitution was drafted in Phillips' garden in Bath (where he had become a teacher at the Bath Academy of Art) and he participated in most of the concerts until he became disillusioned with its politicisation. In 1968 he moved to Wolverhampton
Wolverhampton
Wolverhampton is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands, England. For Eurostat purposes Walsall and Wolverhampton is a NUTS 3 region and is one of five boroughs or unitary districts that comprise the "West Midlands" NUTS 2 region...
to teach at Wolverhampton School of Art, and he had a second one-man exhibition, at the Ikon Gallery
Ikon Gallery
The Ikon Gallery is an English gallery of contemporary art, located in Brindleyplace, Birmingham. It is housed in the Grade II listed, neo-gothic former Oozells Street Board School, designed by John Henry Chamberlain in 1877. The gallery's current director is Jonathan Watkins.Ikon was set up to...
, Birmingham. He wrote the opera Irma in the following year and started the Terminal Grey series of paintings.
Throughout the 1970s his works were exhibited widely in one-man shows and collections. After a period as a visiting tutor at the Art School in Kassel
Kassel
Kassel is a town located on the Fulda River in northern Hesse, Germany. It is the administrative seat of the Kassel Regierungsbezirk and the Kreis of the same name and has approximately 195,000 inhabitants.- History :...
, Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
he abandoned teaching and took his first trip to Africa. In 1973 he began the 20 Sites n Years photographic project. His first significant publication, Works/Texts I, was published in 1975 by Hansjörg Mayer and his first retrosepctive exhibition toured Europe. This was also the year that he met Marvin and Ruth Sackner, who were to become his patrons and founded an archive in Miami to house most of his work. The following year saw the completion of the privately printed edition of A Humument, which had been published in ten sections since 1971.
In 1978 Brian Eno produced a recording of Irma for Obscure Records
Obscure Records
Obscure Records was a U.K. record label which existed from 1975 to 1978. It was created and run by Brian Eno, who also produced the albums . Ten albums were issued in the series...
directed by Gavin Bryars
Gavin Bryars
Richard Gavin Bryars is an English composer and double bassist. He has been active in, or has produced works in, a variety of styles of music, including jazz, free improvisation, minimalism, historicism, experimental music, avant-garde and neoclassicism.-Early life and career:Born in Goole, East...
with a cast including Howard Skempton and Phillips himself. Phillips began contributing regular reviews to the Times Literary Supplement (now TLS). At the beginning of the 1980s he designed a series of tapestries for his old Oxford college and he returned to portraiture with a Portrait of Pella Erskine-Tulloch (the bookbinder who bound Phillips' favourite version of A Humument in three volumes). Erskine-Tulloch would become the subject of a series of weekly sittings which he described as "Pella on Sunday". He had moved out of the family home at 102 Grove Lane and moved back into his studio at 57 Talfourd Road in Peckham. A man with a great pleasure in habit, he would lunch every Tuesday in the Choumert Café on Choumert Road. His private limited edition of his own translation of Dante's Inferno
The Divine Comedy
The Divine Comedy is an epic poem written by Dante Alighieri between 1308 and his death in 1321. It is widely considered the preeminent work of Italian literature, and is seen as one of the greatest works of world literature...
illustrated with his prints was published in 1983 and in 1984 he was elected a Royal Academician
Royal Academy
The Royal Academy of Arts is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly, London. The Royal Academy of Arts has a unique position in being an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects whose purpose is to promote the creation, enjoyment and...
. Peter Greenaway
Peter Greenaway
Peter Greenaway, CBE is a British film director. His films are noted for the distinct influence of Renaissance and Baroque painting, and Flemish painting in particular...
and Phillips co-directed A TV Dante with John Gielgud
John Gielgud
Sir Arthur John Gielgud, OM, CH was an English actor, director, and producer. A descendant of the renowned Terry acting family, he achieved early international acclaim for his youthful, emotionally expressive Hamlet which broke box office records on Broadway in 1937...
and Bob Peck
Bob Peck
Bob Peck was an English stage, television and film actor.-Early life:He went to Leeds Modern School in Lawnswood...
, which was broadcast on Channel 4
Channel 4
Channel 4 is a British public-service television broadcaster which began working on 2 November 1982. Although largely commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority , the station is now owned and operated by the Channel...
television in 1986. During this time he also collaborated with Malcolm Bradbury
Malcolm Bradbury
Sir Malcolm Stanley Bradbury CBE was an English author and academic.-Life:Bradbury was the son of a railwayman. His family moved to London in 1935, but returned to Sheffield in 1941 with his brother and mother...
, Adrian Mitchell
Adrian Mitchell
Adrian Mitchell FRSL was an English poet, novelist and playwright. A former journalist, he became a noted figure on the British anti-authoritarian Left. For almost half a century he was the foremost poet of the country's anti-Bomb movement...
, Jake Auerbach
Jake Auerbach
Jake Auerbach is a British film maker specialising in documentary subjects. Though his films have ranged across the cultural spectrum he is best known for his portraits of artists both contemporary and historical.-Career:...
, Richard Minsky
Richard Minsky
Richard P. Minsky is an American scholar of bookbinding and a book artist. He is the founder of the Center for Book Arts in New York City.-Background:...
and Heather McHugh
Heather McHugh
-Life:Heather McHugh, a poet, translator, and educator, was born in San Diego, California, to Canadian parents, John Laurence, a marine biologist, and Eileen Francesca . They raised McHugh in Gloucester Point, Virginia. There, her father directed the marine biological laboratory on the York River...
.
At the beginning of the 1990s Phillips painted portraits of the Monty Python
Monty Python
Monty Python was a British surreal comedy group who created their influential Monty Python's Flying Circus, a British television comedy sketch show that first aired on the BBC on 5 October 1969. Forty-five episodes were made over four series...
team and produced a glass screen and paintings for The Ivy restaurant
The Ivy
The Ivy is a restaurant in West Street, near Covent Garden in London. It opened in 1917 and is popular with celebrities and theatre goers. In 2000, the restaurant was awarded the Moët & Chandon London Restaurant Award for excellence....
in London. He illustrated Plato's Symposium for the Folio Society
Folio Society
The Folio Society is a book club based in London that produces new editions of classic books. Their books are notable for their high quality bindings and original illustrations...
(for whom he would illustrate Waiting for Godot
Waiting for Godot
Waiting for Godot is an absurdist play by Samuel Beckett, in which two characters, Vladimir and Estragon, wait endlessly and in vain for someone named Godot to arrive. Godot's absence, as well as numerous other aspects of the play, have led to many different interpretations since the play's...
in 1999), completed his Curriculum Vitae series of paintings and saw a new Works and Texts book published. In 1994 he went to Harvard as Artist in Residence at the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts
Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts
The Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts at Harvard University, in Cambridge, Massachusetts is the only building actually built by Le Corbusier in the United States, and one of only two in the Americas...
and published Merely Connect, which he had written with Salman Rushdie during a series of portrait sittings. With the move to a new studio in Bellenden Road and a change of ownership of the Choumert Café, Phillips began to lunch regularly opposite his studio at the Crossroads Café, where he could be found reading literary magazines through his blue-rimmed spectacles.
He curated the 1995 exhibition Africa: the Art of a Continent for the Royal Academy
Royal Academy
The Royal Academy of Arts is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly, London. The Royal Academy of Arts has a unique position in being an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects whose purpose is to promote the creation, enjoyment and...
and became their Chairman of Exhibitions. Phillips began to move into new areas in the mid 1990s: stage design, The Postcard Century for Thames & Hudson
Thames & Hudson
Thames & Hudson is a publisher of illustrated books on art, architecture, design, and visual culture. With its headquarters in London, England it has a sister company in New York and subsidiaries in Melbourne, Singapore and Hong Kong...
(building on his passion for postcards), quilting, mud drawings and wire structures. All his old projects continued and he began illustrating Ulysses
Ulysses (novel)
Ulysses is a novel by the Irish author James Joyce. It was first serialised in parts in the American journal The Little Review from March 1918 to December 1920, and then published in its entirety by Sylvia Beach on 2 February 1922, in Paris. One of the most important works of Modernist literature,...
. He also translated the libretto of Otello
Otello
Otello is an opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Arrigo Boito, based on Shakespeare's play Othello. It was Verdi's penultimate opera, and was first performed at the Teatro alla Scala, Milan, on February 5, 1887....
while he was designing the English National Opera
English National Opera
English National Opera is an opera company based in London, resident at the London Coliseum in St. Martin's Lane. It is one of the two principal opera companies in London, along with the Royal Opera, Covent Garden...
production. In 1998 Largo Records released Six of Hearts, a CD of Phillips' songs and other music written since 1992 but this went out of print when the label failed in 2002.
By the late 1990s Phillips was an establishment figure in most aspects of the arts. He became a trustee
Trustee
Trustee is a legal term which, in its broadest sense, can refer to any person who holds property, authority, or a position of trust or responsibility for the benefit of another...
of the National Portrait Gallery, an Honorary Fellow of the London Institute, an Honorary Member of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters
Royal Society of Portrait Painters
The Royal Society of Portrait Painters is a British association of portrait painters which holds an annual exhibition at the Mall Galleries in London...
and a Trustee of the British Museum
British Museum
The British Museum is a museum of human history and culture in London. Its collections, which number more than seven million objects, are amongst the largest and most comprehensive in the world and originate from all continents, illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from its...
. He celebrated his fiftieth birthday by playing a game of cricket
Cricket
Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of 11 players on an oval-shaped field, at the centre of which is a rectangular 22-yard long pitch. One team bats, trying to score as many runs as possible while the other team bowls and fields, trying to dismiss the batsmen and thus limit the...
with many of his friends at the Kennington Oval cricket ground. In 1995, he married the writer Fiona Maddocks, Music Critic of The Observer
The Observer
The Observer is a British newspaper, published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its daily sister paper The Guardian, which acquired it in 1993, it takes a liberal or social democratic line on most issues. It is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper.-Origins:The first issue,...
.
In 2000 he designed lampposts, pavements, gates and arches for Southwark
Southwark
Southwark is a district of south London, England, and the administrative headquarters of the London Borough of Southwark. Situated east of Charing Cross, it forms one of the oldest parts of London and fronts the River Thames to the north...
Council's Peckham Renewal Project. Antony Gormley
Antony Gormley
Antony Mark David Gormley OBE RA is a British sculptor. His best known works include the Angel of the North, a public sculpture in the North of England, commissioned in 1995 and erected in February 1998, Another Place on Crosby Beach near Liverpool, and Event Horizon, a multi-part site...
, whose workshop adjoins Phillips' studio in Bellenden Road, Peckham, designed bollards for the same project and the work of both artists adorns that street.
Phillips was made a Commander of the British Empire
Order of the British Empire
The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is an order of chivalry established on 4 June 1917 by George V of the United Kingdom. The Order comprises five classes in civil and military divisions...
for services to the Arts in the 2002 Queen's Birthday Honours
Queen's Birthday Honours
The Queen's Birthday Honours is a part of the British honours system, being a civic occasion on the celebration of the Queen's Official Birthday in which new members of most Commonwealth Realms honours are named. The awards are presented by the reigning monarch or head of state, currently Queen...
list.
In 2006 Phillips exhibited six works in the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition
Royal Academy summer exhibition
The Summer Exhibition is an open art exhibition held annually by the Royal Academy in Burlington House, Piccadilly in central London, England, during the summer months of June, July, and August...
amongst them Colour Sudoku, furthermore, held a Micro-Retrospective (9 February - 23 April 2006) at the Ashmolean Museum
Ashmolean Museum
The Ashmolean Museum on Beaumont Street, Oxford, England, is the world's first university museum...
in Oxford.
Works
His best known work is A HumumentA Humument
A Humument: A treated Victorian novel is an altered book by British artist Tom Phillips, first published in 1970. It is a piece of art created over W H Mallock's 1892 novel A Human Document whose title results from the partial deletion of the original title: A Human document.Phillips drew, painted,...
: A Treated Victorian Novel. One day, Phillips went to a bookseller's with the express intention of buying a cheap book to use as the basis of an art project. He randomly purchased a novel called A Human Document by Victorian author William Hurrell Mallock
William Hurrell Mallock
William Hurrell Mallock was an English novelist and economics writer.-Biography:He was educated privately and then at Balliol College, Oxford. He won the Newdigate prize in 1872 and took a second class in the final classical schools in 1874, securing his Bachelor of Arts degree from Oxford...
, and began a long project of creating art from its pages. He paints, collages or draws over the pages, leaving some of the text peeking through in serpentine bubble shapes, creating a "found" text with its own story, different from the original. Characters from Mallock's novel appear in the new story, but the protagonist is a new character named "Bill Toge", whose surname can only appear on pages which originally contained words like "together" or "altogether". Toge's story is a meditation on unrequited love and the struggle to create and appreciate art.
Several editions of A Humument have been published over the years, with more and more pages being revised each time. The project is ongoing, and future editions are expected.
Phillips has used the same technique (always with the Mallock source material) in many of his other works, including the illustration of his own translation of Dante
Dante Alighieri
Durante degli Alighieri, mononymously referred to as Dante , was an Italian poet, prose writer, literary theorist, moral philosopher, and political thinker. He is best known for the monumental epic poem La commedia, later named La divina commedia ...
's Inferno
The Divine Comedy
The Divine Comedy is an epic poem written by Dante Alighieri between 1308 and his death in 1321. It is widely considered the preeminent work of Italian literature, and is seen as one of the greatest works of world literature...
, (published in 1985). He is also fond of re-using images from postcard
Postcard
A postcard or post card is a rectangular piece of thick paper or thin cardboard intended for writing and mailing without an envelope....
s (which he avidly collects) as well as drawing stencil-style lettering, freehand. The melding of visual art with textual content is a hallmark of Phillips's work.
He also paints portrait
Portrait
thumb|250px|right|Portrait of [[Thomas Jefferson]] by [[Rembrandt Peale]], 1805. [[New-York Historical Society]].A portrait is a painting, photograph, sculpture, or other artistic representation of a person, in which the face and its expression is predominant. The intent is to display the likeness,...
s (his portrait of Dame Iris Murdoch
Iris Murdoch
Dame Iris Murdoch DBE was an Irish-born British author and philosopher, best known for her novels about political and social questions of good and evil, sexual relationships, morality, and the power of the unconscious...
is well known) and mural
Mural
A mural is any piece of artwork painted or applied directly on a wall, ceiling or other large permanent surface. A particularly distinguishing characteristic of mural painting is that the architectural elements of the given space are harmoniously incorporated into the picture.-History:Murals of...
s, and creates installation art
Installation art
Installation art describes an artistic genre of three-dimensional works that are often site-specific and designed to transform the perception of a space. Generally, the term is applied to interior spaces, whereas exterior interventions are often called Land art; however, the boundaries between...
and sculpture
Sculpture
Sculpture is three-dimensional artwork created by shaping or combining hard materials—typically stone such as marble—or metal, glass, or wood. Softer materials can also be used, such as clay, textiles, plastics, polymers and softer metals...
. He is a member of the Royal Academy
Royal Academy
The Royal Academy of Arts is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly, London. The Royal Academy of Arts has a unique position in being an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects whose purpose is to promote the creation, enjoyment and...
(since 1989) and, in 2003 designed a Royal Mint
Royal Mint
The Royal Mint is the body permitted to manufacture, or mint, coins in the United Kingdom. The Mint originated over 1,100 years ago, but since 2009 it operates as Royal Mint Ltd, a company which has an exclusive contract with HM Treasury to supply all coinage for the UK...
commemorative five-pound coin for the 50th anniversary of the 1953 coronation of Queen Elizabeth II
Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom
Elizabeth II is the constitutional monarch of 16 sovereign states known as the Commonwealth realms: the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Jamaica, Barbados, the Bahamas, Grenada, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Belize,...
. He is an opera
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
fan, and has composed an opera, Irma, using the Humument source material for the libretto. He also wrote the libretto for Heart of Darkness, a chamber opera with music by Tarik O'Regan
Tarik O'Regan
Tarik O'Regan , full name Tarik Hamilton O'Regan , is a British composer, partly of Algerian extraction. His compositions number over 90 and are partially represented on 22 recordings which have been recognised with two GRAMMY nominations. He is also the recipient of two British Composer Awards...
currently in development with American Opera Projects.
Phillips engages in other projects that challenge the viewer's perceptions of art, such as his ongoing project 20 Sites n Years, in which he photographs the same 20 spots in his studio's neighborhood, once a year. As the years go by, the viewer watches the neighborhood gradually change. Similarly, Phillips has done a series of paintings called Terminal Greys, consisting of simple cross-hatched bars of murky, grayish paint composed from the leftovers on his palette at the end of each work day. Since there are no aesthetic judgments on the artist's part in the creation of these works, they are virtually mechanical; the "art" could be said to lie in the conception of the work and not in the accidental "grey rainbow" appearance of the result.
He collaborated with film director Peter Greenaway
Peter Greenaway
Peter Greenaway, CBE is a British film director. His films are noted for the distinct influence of Renaissance and Baroque painting, and Flemish painting in particular...
on A TV Dante, a television
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
miniseries
Miniseries
A miniseries , in a serial storytelling medium, is a television show production which tells a story in a limited number of episodes. The exact number is open to interpretation; however, they are usually limited to fewer than a whole season. The term "miniseries" is generally a North American term...
adaptation of the first eight cantos of the Inferno
The Divine Comedy
The Divine Comedy is an epic poem written by Dante Alighieri between 1308 and his death in 1321. It is widely considered the preeminent work of Italian literature, and is seen as one of the greatest works of world literature...
.
Phillips has provided cover art for music albums including Starless and Bible Black
Starless and Bible Black
Starless and Bible Black is an album released by the British progressive rock band King Crimson in 1974. Most of the vocal pieces on the album are satires and commentaries on the sleaziness and materialism of society...
by King Crimson
King Crimson
King Crimson are a rock band founded in London, England in 1969. Often categorised as a foundational progressive rock group, the band have incorporated diverse influences and instrumentation during their history...
(1974), Another Green World
Another Green World
Another Green World is the third studio album by British musician Brian Eno. Produced by Eno and Rhett Davies, it was originally released by Island Records in September 1975. As he had done with previous solo albums, Eno worked with several guest musicians including Phil Collins, John Cale and...
by Brian Eno
Brian Eno
Brian Peter George St. John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno , commonly known as Brian Eno or simply as Eno , is an English musician, composer, record producer, singer and visual artist, known as one of the principal innovators of ambient music.Eno studied at Colchester Institute art school in Essex,...
(1975), and one of the sixteen portraits that form Peter Blake
Peter Blake (artist)
Sir Peter Thomas Blake, KBE, CBE, RDI, RA is an English pop artist, best known for his design of the sleeve for the Beatles' album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. He lives in Chiswick, London, UK.-Career:...
's design for Face Dances
Face Dances
Face Dances is the ninth album by English rock band The Who. It was originally released in 1981 in the US on Warner Bros. Records and in the UK on Polydor Records...
by The Who
The Who
The Who are an English rock band formed in 1964 by Roger Daltrey , Pete Townshend , John Entwistle and Keith Moon . They became known for energetic live performances which often included instrument destruction...
(1981). His cover art for Dark Star
Dark Star (band)
Dark Star were an English rock band from London, whose music mixed dark psychedelica, with a dub undertow and noisy effects-laden guitar.-History:...
's Twenty Twenty Sound
Twenty Twenty Sound
Twenty Twenty Sound is the debut album by English band Dark Star, released in 1999 via Harvest Records.-Track listing:#"96 Days"#"I Am The Sun"#"About 3am"#"Vertigo"#"Graceadelica"#"A Disaffection"#"Lies"#"What In The World's Wrong"...
used the same technique as The Humument, but using the album's lyrics as the source material.
He has also produced books about art including Music In Art and a study of African art.
Selected bibliography
- A Humument: A Treated Victorian Novel (1970, revised editions 1980, 1987, 1997, 2005)
- Dante's Inferno (illustrated translation, 1985)
- Tom Phillips: The Portrait Works. London: National Portrait Gallery, 1989. ISBN 1855140217
- Works and Texts. London: Thames & Hudson, 1992. ISBN 0500974020
- Africa: The Art of a Continent. Munich: Prestel, 1995. ISBN 3-7913-1603-6 (hardback) 1999. ISBN 3-7913-2004-1 (paperback)
- Aspects of Art: a Painter's Alphabet (1997)
- Music in Art. Munich: Prestel, 1997. ISBN 3-7913-1864-0
- The Postcard Century: 2000 Cards and Their Messages. London and New York: Thames & Hudson, 2000. ISBN 0-500-97594-9 (hardback). ISBN 0-500-97590-6 (paperback)
- We Are the People: Postcards from the Collection of Tom Phillips. London: National Portrait Gallery, 2004. ISBN 1855145170
- Merry Meetings: Drawings and text by Tom Phillips. D3, 2005. ISBN 0954732413