Tom Phillips (artist)

Tom Phillips CBERA
Phillips inSpeaking Portraits
Born	Trevor Thomas Phillips (1937-05-25)25 May 1937 Clapham,London
Died	28 November 2022(2022-11-28)(aged 85)
Education	Royal College of Art
Known for	Painting,printmakingandcollage
Spouses	Jill Purdy ​ ​ (m.1961; dissolved 1988)​ Fiona Maddocks ​ (m.1995)​

Trevor Thomas PhillipsCBERA(25 May 1937 – 28 November 2022) was an English visual artist. He worked as a painter,printmakerandcollagist.

Life

Trevor Thomas Phillips was born on 25 May 1937 inClapham,London to David and Margaret Phillips (née Arnold). He was the younger of two sons.

In 1940, the cotton market collapsed and the family had to sell their home. Phillips' father went to work inAbergavenny,Wales, leaving his wife to run the 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 shortleaseholdproperties as investments and although these did not yield the return that they wished, his mother did buy thefreeholdof one house, which would later become her son's studio and home.

From 1942 to 1947, Phillips attended Bonneville Road Primary School in Clapham.He said that while he was there 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 for his fascination with drawing and his refusal to conform. His mother recalled him buying aplatform ticketevery Sunday and taking long railway journeys when he was just 11 years old. He progressed toHenry Thornton Grammar School,Clapham, where he developed his love of music, playingviolinandbassoonin the school orchestra and singing solobaritonein school concerts and stage events.In 1954 he exhibited paintings for the first time, in an open art show on the railings of theThames Embankment.A year later, aged 17, he won a travel scholarship to France, where he lived for three months. His mother remembers him returning to London with a sack of horse bones from theFirst 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 thePhilharmonia Chorus.

From 1958 to 1960, Phillips read English Literature andAnglo SaxonatSt Catherine's College, Oxford.He attended life-drawing classes at theRuskin School of Drawing and Fine Art,acted in plays, and designed and illustrated theIsismagazine. Upon graduation, he taught Art, Music and English at Aristotle Road School inBrixton,London. He also attended evening classes in life drawing, underFrank Auerbach,and sculpture atCamberwell College of Arts,where he became a full-time student in 1961. When he graduated in 1964 his work was selected for that year'sYoung ContemporariesExhibition in London and in the following year, theAIA Galleriesin 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.They would remain married until 1988.

Phillips became a teacher atIpswich School of Art,where one of his students wasBrian Eno,who would become a lifelong friend. Phillips soon moved to teachLiberal StudiesatWalthamstow Polytechnic,where he met the pianistJohn Tilburyand participated in improvisation concerts at severalpolytechnics.His first musical composition wasFour Piecesfor Tilbury.

In 1966 Phillips exhibited at theRoyal Academy Summer Exhibitionfor the first time, started work onA Humument,and began collaborating with Brian Eno. WhenCornelius Cardewfounded theScratch Orchestra,its constitution was drafted in Phillips' garden inBath(where he had become a teacher at theBath Academy of Art) and he participated in most of the concerts until he became disillusioned with its politicization.In 1968 he moved toWolverhamptonto teach atWolverhampton School of Art,and he had a second one-man exhibition, at theIkon Galleryin Birmingham. He wrote the operaIrmain the following year and started theTerminal Greyseries 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 inKassel,Germany, he abandoned teaching and took his first trip to Africa. In 1973 he began the20 Sites n Yearsphotographic project. His first significant publication,Works/Texts I,was published in 1975 byHansjörg Mayerand his first retrospective exhibition toured Europe. This was also the year that he met Marvin and Ruth Sackner, who were to become his patrons and found an archive inMiamito house most of his work. The following year saw the completion of the privately printed edition ofA Humument,which had been published in ten sections since 1971.

In 1978 Brian Eno produced a recording ofIrmaforObscure Recordsdirected byGavin Bryarswith a cast includingHoward Skemptonand Phillips himself. Phillips began contributing regular reviews toThe Times Literary Supplement(nowTLS). 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 ofPella Erskine-Tulloch(the bookbinder who bound Phillips' favourite version ofA Humumentin 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 inPeckham.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 ofDante's Infernoillustrated with his prints was published in 1983 and in 1984 he was elected aRoyal Academician.Peter Greenawayand Phillips co-directedA TV DantewithJohn GielgudandBob Peck,which was broadcast onChannel 4television in 1986. During this time he also collaborated withMalcolm Bradbury,Adrian Mitchell,Jake Auerbach,Richard MinskyandHeather McHugh.

At the beginning of the 1990s Phillips painted portraits of theMonty Pythonteam and produced a glass screen and paintings forThe Ivy restaurantin London. He illustratedPlato's Symposiumfor theFolio Society(for whom he would illustrateWaiting for Godotin 1999), completed hisCurriculum Vitaeseries of paintings and saw a newWorks and Textsbook published. In 1994 he went toHarvardas Artist in Residence at theCarpenter Center for the Visual Artsand publishedMerely Connect,which he had written withSalman Rushdieduring 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.

As part of theAfrica95celebration of African arts throughout Britain, he curated the 1995 exhibitionAfrica: the Art of a Continentfor theRoyal Academyand became their Chairman of Exhibitions.Phillips began to move into new areas in the mid-1990s: stage design,The Postcard CenturyforThames & Hudson(building on his passion for postcards), quilting, mud drawings and wire structures. All his old projects continued and he began illustratingUlysses.He also translated the libretto ofOtellowhile he was designing theEnglish National Operaproduction. In 1998 Largo Records releasedSix 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 theNational Portrait Gallery,an Honorary Fellow of theLondon Institute,an Honorary Member of theRoyal Society of Portrait Paintersand a Trustee of theBritish Museum.He celebrated his fiftieth birthday by playing a game ofcricketwith many of his friends at theKennington Ovalcricket ground. In 1995, he married the writerFiona Maddocks,Music Critic ofThe Observer.

In 2000 he designed lampposts, pavements, gates and arches forSouthwarkCouncil'sPeckham 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 aCommander of the Order of the British Empirefor services to the Arts in the2002 Queen's Birthday Honourslist.

He wasSlade Professor of Fine Artat theUniversity of Oxfordfor 2005–06.In 2006 Phillips exhibited six works in theRoyal Academy Summer Exhibition,among them "Colour Sudoku", and held a Micro-Retrospective (9 February–23 April 2006) at theAshmolean Museumin Oxford.

Phillips died on 28 November 2022, at the age of 85.

Works

Phillips' best known work isA Humument:A Treated Victorian Novel originally by W.H. Mallock.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 calledA Human Documentby Victorian authorWilliam Hurrell Mallock,and began a long project of creating art from its pages. He painted, collaged or drew 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 that originally contained words such as "together" or "altogether". Toge's story is a meditation on unrequited love and the struggle to create and appreciate art.

Several editions ofA Humumenthave been published over the years, with more pages being revised each time. The sixth and final edition was published in 2016.

Phillips used the same technique (always with the Mallock source material) in many of his other works, including the illustration of his own translation ofDante'sInferno(published in 1985). He was also fond of re-using images frompostcards(which he avidly collected), as well as drawing stencil-style lettering, freehand. With these works, Phillips used famous pieces of literature and art in his work. The melding of visual art with textual content was a hallmark of his work.

He also painted portraits (his portrait ofDame Iris Murdochis well known) and murals, and createdinstallation artand sculpture. His portrait of Michael Kustow won jointHunting Art Prizein 1988.Phillips was a member of theRoyal Academy(since 1989) and, in 2003 designed aRoyal Mintcommemorative five-pound coin for the 50th anniversary of the 1953 coronation ofQueen Elizabeth II.He was an opera fan, and composed an opera,Irma,using theHumumentsource material for the libretto. He also wrote the libretto forHeart of Darkness,a chamber opera with music byTarik O'Regancurrently in development with American Opera Projects.

Phillips engaged in other projects that challenge the viewer's perceptions of art, such as his project20 Sites n Years,in which he photographed the same 20 spots in his studio's neighborhood, once a year. As the years go by, the viewer watches the neighbourhood gradually change. Similarly, Phillips made a series of paintings calledTerminal 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 directorPeter GreenawayonA TV Dante,a television miniseries adaptation of the first eight cantos of theInferno.

Phillips provided cover art for music albums includingStarless and Bible BlackbyKing Crimson(1974),Another Green WorldbyBrian Eno(1975), and one of the 16 portraits that formPeter Blake's design forFace DancesbyThe Who(1981). The cover art by Phillips forDark Star'sTwenty Twenty Sound(1999) used the same technique asThe Humument,but with the album's lyrics as the source material.

Phillips also produced books about art, includingMusic In Artand a study of African art.

Selected bibliography

Exhibition catalogues

• Tom Phillips: New and Recent Work[catalogue of the exhibition held at Flowers East 26 November – 24 December 2004], London.
• We are the People: Postcards from the Collection of Tom Phillips[catalogue of the exhibition held at The Nation Portrait Gallery 2 March- 20 June 2004], London.
• Fifty Years of Tom Phillips[catalogue of the exhibition held at Flowers 12 March – 4 April 1987], London.

Monographs

• Paschal, H., & T. Phillips (1992),Tom Phillips: Works and Texts.London: Thames and Hudson Ltd.
• Phillips, T., & N. Rosenthal (2005),Merry Meetings: Drawings and Texts by Toms Phillips.D3 Editions Publishers.
• Phillips, T. (2012),A Humument: A Treated Victorian Novel.London: Thames and Hudson Ltd.

External links

• Official website
• 48 artworks by or after Tom Phillipsat theArt UKsite
• Portraits of Tom Phillipsat theNational Portrait Gallery, London
• Official Humument web site
• Profile on Royal Academy of Arts Collections
• Article aboutA Humumentat ShortTermMemoryLoss
• Heart of Darkness opera
• Tom PhillipsatIMDb
• Tom Phillipsdiscography atDiscogs