1994: Division II
Previous | Next

Human Documents: Tom Phillips's Art of the Page.

By Daniel Traister.

Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1993.

40 p., illustrated.

This exhibition was built around one book, A Humument, which Tom Phillips constructed from W.H. Mallock's 1892 novel A Human Document by drawing and painting over portions of its pages, leaving only selected words exposed. The catalog adopts a traditional device of printing a cream-colored block over illustrations to indicate the original page size, but cleverly alludes to Phillips's methods by overlaying a similar block on its own text pages. The overall design is just strange enough to unhinge our complacency. The text, which could have easily strayed into abstruse or opaque critical discussion, instead remains clear and engaging, providing information about the chronological and artistic history of Phillips's transformation of Mallock's novel.

Colophon: "The photography and exhibition design for Human Documents: Tom Phillips's Art of the Page were executed by Joseph Reed Petticrew, Philadelphia and New York. This catalog was designed by Mayer & Myers, Philadelphia, and printed in an edition of one thousand copies by Mercantile Printing Company, Worcester, Massachusetts, ... May 1993." Catalog published in conjunction with an exhibition of materials selected from the Ruth and Marvin Sackner Archive of Concrete and Visual Poetry, May 10 — July 9, 1993, Kamin Gallery, Van Pelt-Dietrich Library, University of Pennsylvania. Division Two Winner, 1994. Exhibited courtesy of the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, The University of Texas at Austin. (ST & ES)

Previous | Next