Saturday 28 January 2012

Art I Like: more Tom Phillips

More research for the writing project, which took me back to Tom Phillips.

I came across this etching, inspired by musical scores. PHILLIS

 Moment Musicale,  etching,  64 x 51 cm.  From the Royal Academy 'Members Portfolio' of prints by 15 Academicians. London, 2000.  Image size 41 x 27 cms.   Image from the Red Grape Gallery website here.

The etching looks rather like some of the 'asemic' writing drawings by artists like Leon Ferrari and Marian Bijlenga, which I looked at a week or two ago - and which in turn influenced my own writing paintings and drawings for this project.  I hadn't previously come across these images.

I find it interesting that Tom Phillips has worked very constantly in the area of writing and words, from his Humument in the 1970s onwards.  I particularly like his writings in wire, and the way these have translated into 3D sculptures, made from wire or, more recently, from etched glass.

His several different manifestations of Wittgenstein's Dilemma all focus on this idea.




Wittgenstein/Cage, 2009 
Wire
90 x 90 x 90 cm / 35½ x 35½ x 35½ in  Image copied from Flowers Gallery website here.



Image copied from the Cass Foundation website here.

On this wire writing sculpture, the text is almost illegible: the title emphasises the irony of writing which cannot easily be deciphered and read.




The Calligrapher Replies, 1996 
Wire
182 x 115 cm / 71¾ x 438½ in  Image copied from Flowers gallery website here.



This Phillips collage also relates to the writing drawings I have been making.  The marks look vaguely like script, the layout looks like lines of writing, but it is not really writing or text at all.  The title, Rima's Song, however, suggests that there are lyrics somewhere in the script.






Rima's Song
Collage on paper
Acquired 2011.   Image from Oxford JCR Art Fund website here







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