A series of themed books of materials from Tom Phillips postcard archive is published by the Bodleian Library, each one bearing A Humument fragment on the cover 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 In One Side & Out the Other pub. Ferry Press includes 21 illustrations by Phillips using Humument procedures TP: Cage became, more than anything, a moral exemplar for me — showing, as Wittgenstein says, that ethics and aesthetics are one and the same thing (I would go farther to say that ethics is a subset of aesthetics). As for Eno, I was a reluctant and largely ineffectual teacher, and gave it [teaching] up as soon as I could afford to. Brian started as a student, and I as a tutor, on the same day. It was my first job. Brian was my best student — in fact almost the only one I can remember, except for some amazing looking girls. But that was almost fifty years ago, and the lines of age converge in that now he is just a friend and colleague, and we both believe one should sing every day (and louder sing…). He has produced and performed in Irma, and he wrote a song for a concert I gave in Oxford of music by various composer friends based on A Humument texts. His was “It Felt Like Running Away,” which he performed, and I was in the chorus, my last public singing gig… somewhere there is a recording. There is a portrait I did of him in the National Portrait Gallery, and he was at my seventy-fifth birthday party: so it’s a long story. I mention this here to show that A Humument is a chronicle also of family and friends, with things and people coming in and out of focus over the years. By the time I finish it, it will feel like that poem by Patrice de La Tour du Pin: “Ici venue mon histoire s’achève. / Quels passagers m’ont suivi jusqu’au bout?” [“I’ve come thus far, my story winds up here: / What passengers have seen me to the end?”] I haven’t got the book at hand, and since I’ve carried these lines in my head for many years, I may be in part misquoting them, as I usually find when I look up bits of Shakespeare that I think I know. American premiere of Irma, produced by NCSU Centre Stage at Stewart Theatre of the University of North Carolina in Raleigh with Tom Phillips playing the part of The Narrator.

Phillips focused on English at Oxford, but also took drawing classes and lessons on Renaissance iconography, and he later studied under the artist Frank Auerbach at the Camberwell School of Art. Perhaps thanks to that diverse array of study, A Humument is hard to fit into any existing categories of works, whether artistic or literary. It has both the sui generis obsessiveness of folk art, the intensely sophisticated craftmanship of medieval illuminated manuscripts, and a solid dose of 20th-century avant-gardism. “It didn’t have a genre at all,” Phillips said. “So I called it a treated novel.” Tom Phillips played a pivotal role in the artistic life of the Royal Academy. Elected as a Member in 1984, he served as Chairman of the Exhibitions Committee from 1995 until 2007. His working relationship with the mercurial Norman Rosenthal, the RA’s Exhibitions Secretary, was key, and together with the curatorial team, they oversaw an amazing programme of exhibitions: Nicholas Poussin, Sensation, Monet in the 20th Century, Botticelli’s Dante and Aztecs, to name a few of the 70-plus shows put on by the RA during this period – and not forgetting the hugely ambitious Africa: The Art of a Continent in 1995-96, which Tom not only curated but for which he also edited the catalogue. KR: A few of these “plotlines” deal with art and art’s status in society: “The lame one’s a / critic… I shall go to him for a bottle of art…”; “what / of the price / of art”; “‘Just look at / Julian / rise to fame.’ / said / the Muses / at / the opening.” And then the most damning of them all: “leave / English /art / in / closed / bag, stamped / art.” What motivated these thoughts? Were you the speaker behind “I am remaining in London for / the death of my ambition”? How do you feel about the commodification of art today? Aspects of Art: A Painter's Alphabet, featuring A Humument alphabet is published by Bellew in association with Dulwich Picture Gallery

Biography

Humument p4 Nine Eleven and A Humument p7 Scribe the Story screen prints in editions of 100 exhibited at Royal Academy Summer Exhibition A Course in Sussex II is produced twenty-five years after the first version, this time marking the golden jubilee of the University of Sussex Tom embraced the RA once he was on the inside but, like many other Academicians elected before and after him, he was less than enthusiastic towards the institution when he was on the outside. A year before he joined, I had taken a part-time job at the Academy to start RA Magazine. At the time, I was working for Tom producing the etchings for his major project of translating and illustrating Dante’s Inferno. When I told him what I was intending to do, his face said it all. It wasn’t an institution he or his peer group had much to do with. This changed, however, with his election to Membership. The painter R.B. Kitaj, one of his contemporaries whose work he particularly admired, had been elected at the same time, and, knowing this, Tom jokingly announced that he couldn’t possibly refuse membership as Ron had accepted. A Humument p10 Give Me Tomorrow and A Humument p154 Our Excellent Exodus in limited editions are exhibited Royal Academy Summer Exhibition British Council exhibition 'Tom Phillips Graphics' tours for 8 years to France, Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Peru, Ecuador, Chile, Jamaica finishing in Iraq in 1988

How to draw characters, just do what he does on 103, 110, 166, 273, 324, 344, 346, 347, or at 355, 361. It’s amazing, beautiful, and simple. KR: You’ve written that the goal of the work is to replace itself completely, and that in a cycle of six editions you will have achieved this. Is this still the plan? What’s the sixth edition looking like? A Humument is referenced in Imaged Words and Worded Images, edited and with an introduction by Richard Kostelanetz (pub. Outerbridge & Dienstfrey) It was while he was at Bonneville primary school that, as he said, he first “learned the word artist, and discovered that it was someone who did not have to put his paints away”. Armed with this revelation, Phillips soon moved on to other forms of art-making. At the local grammar school, he took up the bassoon and violin and sang as a baritone in the choir. In 1957, aged 19, he added the piano to his repertoire, and signed on as one of the original members of the Philharmonia Chorus.I discovered erasure poetry this year and have found tremendous pleasure in it (a few examples of volumes I have loved include Mary Ruefle's A Little White Shadow, Nets by Jen Bervin, and Zong! by M. NourbeSe Philip). I have also read interviews with the creators of these works (and others) and find it interesting intellectually as well as satisfying artistically). 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." Tom Phillips: Works from A Humument an exhibition at Flowers Gallery New York City, includes new series of Humument collage works. The exhibition is reviewed by Faye Hirsch Art in America No 9/Oct, Works from A Humument' appears in Art in Review, New York Times (June 2005), Roberta Smith

A Humument features in Ginger Snaps: a collection of cut-ups / machine prose / word & image trips, Kontexts Publications A Book of the Book, some works and projections about the book and writing, ed Steven Clay & Jerome Rothenberg pub. Granary Books Overall: 4 out of 5. Worth it to at least look through, if not pour-over, but this comes with the caveat that you MUST know what you’re getting into. Six of Hearts is released on Largo Records. The songs, written for and performed by Mary Weigold are based on Humument texts. This recording by The Composers Ensemble, conducted by John Woolrich

Works

A Humument Ulysses, A suite of four silkscreen limited edition prints selected from an ongoing series of illustrations to Ulysses

At Leiston Middle School in Suffolk students create an altered novel in the style of A Humument in response to a lecture by Tom PhillipsICA London Artist's Book Fair, features A Humument exhibition and a live event Tom Phillips and Hansjörg Mayer in conversation in which the artist and his publisher discuss their long and productive history He is also in the midst of other projects,whichextend beyond A Humument. “I work all the time,” Phillips told me. At the moment he is painting a chapel in a cathedral in London. The painting isn’t a “religious thing,” according to Phillips, but a “visual thing.” Tom Phillips starts a concordance of A Human Document completed over several years with the assistance of Andrew Gizauskas