A Humument: A Treated Victorian Novel

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Tom Phillips was genuinely learned in the best sense," Norman Rosenthal, a long-time Royal Academy colleague, said following Phillips's death. "He was a true polymath deeply versed in literature, music, and most of all of course in visual art and its practice through his own very personal touch. But also the most witty of individuals, aware of the ironic failings of all three of these endlessly wide worlds of culture, which yet he simultaneously always cherished and loved." Certain Trees: The Constructed Book, Poem and Object, a special display curated by Elizabeth James of the National Art Library at V&A South Kensington Seeing the book shown as a whole gave me some satisfaction, but the feeling that I could fail better than that began to nag. The first bound trade edition (1980), prepared by Hansjörg Mayer in Stuttgart and distributed by Thames & Hudson, marked the end of a dormant period. The book had become a book again and in its turn a suitable case for treatment. Imaginary Postcards, with Jonathan Williams (pub. Trigram Press), A Humument Volume VIII (Tetrad Press), Works/Texts to 1974 (pub. editions hansjorg mayer)

Where are they now? The Class of Forty-Seven pub. Talfourd Press, London and Richard Minsky, New York. Bound collectors edition of thirty collage images by Tom Phillips, interpreted in poems by Heather McHugh and then further modified by Phillips using Humument treatments. The book is the subject of an exhibition at Minsky's studio in New York An exhibition of Humument prints at Searcy's Club at the top of the landmark Gherkin skyscraper, 30 St Mary Axe, London Phillips received the Frances Williams Memorial Prize in 1983 for his illustration and new translation of Dante's Inferno. He also made a TV version of the Inferno with Peter Greenaway which won them jointly as directors the Italia prize. Fragments of text from A Humument appear in a suite of prints O Chateaux oh Saisons, published by Wine ArtsA Course in Sussex II is produced twenty-five years after the first version, this time marking the golden jubilee of the University of Sussex The Art of the Book: From Medieval Manuscript to Graphic Novel, a publication about the National Art Library and its collections by James Bettley (pub. V&A Publications, ) In an age of uncertainty that does not cease to proclaim the death of the avant-garde and in which “suspicious readings” have become the norm, the refiguration (and disfiguration) of found texts has become an important part of experimental literary and artistic production since the 1960s (which, incidentally, is when the failure of the “historical”, self-critical avant-garde reached its apex, at least according to Peter Bürger’s controversial thesis, see Bürger 1984).

Six of Hearts: Songs for Mary Wiegold performed by Mary Wiegold and the Composers Ensemble, conducted by John Woolrich, recorded at St Silas Church, London in December TP: The art world now is behaving as a branch of the fashion business, and I am pleased always to have it now almost received as a primarily literary work by people with a fitter attention span than the those who flit from novelty to novelty like the puppet collectors of the art world’s ever falser reality. Fragments of text from A Humument are incorporated as pendants into the paintings Homage to Frith & Co, Come & Go and the series Ma Vlast As well as words with meaning I have enjoyed the discovery of nonce or nonsense terms which provide a fantasy obbligato to the measure of the text. These are extracted from longer words. The less self-evident their source the more autonomously real they can seem, as on p46 where ‘derstan ansfig’ are ‘the last words on earth’.

A group of friends working in the computer industry make a treated version of Bill Gates's book The Road Ahead, posting it online as the Toad Head Project and crediting A Humument as an inspiration