A Humument [p. 65 from Tetrad Press edition]

Published by Tetrad Press, 1971

  • Signed
  • Softcover
  • Used
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Seller: Granary Books, Brooklyn, NY, U.S.A.Granary Books

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Softcover

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Item description from seller

Single page 7 1/2 x 5 1/2 in. printed on recto side only. In 1966, Tom Phillips embarked on a pivotal project with a simple premise: to find a second-hand book for threepence. After this acquisition, he planned to alter every page with painting, collage, and cut-up techniques, in order to create an entirely new version of the book. For these purposes, he obtained a copy of W. H. Mallock's obscure 1892 Victorian work, titledA Human Document,at a junkshop on Peckham Rye, South London, and retitled his altered bookA Humument. The first printing of this extraordinary work was issued by Ian Tyson's Tetrad Press in a series of boxed pages, 1971–1976 (the complete edition comprises 367 pp.); on the fiftieth anniversary of its inception, in 2016, Phillips completed the sixth and final version of this work, each version with successively more pages reworked, until his original work had itself been completely transformed. Now regarded as a seminal classic of postmodern art, and one of the most importantartists' books of the twentieth century,A Humumenthas become a touchstone of Phillips's oeuvre. The Royal Academy’s 2015 Summer Exhibition dedicated a full room to it, and manuscript was acquired by the Ruth and Marvin Sackner Archive of Concrete and Visual Poetry. In Artforum, William H. Gass writes: "Influenced early on by William S. Burroughs' 'cut up' experiments, limited by an arbitrary budget of three pence, guided by propitious chance to Mallock's volume (which, by the happiest of coincidental ironies, is a novel pretending to be a discovered journal), and finally favored by the fact thatA Human Documentwas found in a popular reprint version that might furnish additional copies, Tom Phillips'A Humumentcomes rationally, arbitrarily, fortuitously, gradually into existence just about the way everything in life does. It begins the way an epic ought: 'The following sing I a book, a book of art of mind art and that which he hid reveal I.'" (ArtforumNov. 1996) Signed by the artist in pencil. Fine.

Seller Inventory # 3022

Bibliographic details

Title
A Humument [p. 65 from Tetrad Press edition]
Author
Phillips, Tom
Publisher
Tetrad Press
Publication year
1971
Signed
Signed by Author(s)
Binding
Soft cover
Seller catalogs
Artists' Books, Fine Printing

Granary Books

Brooklyn, NY, U.S.A.

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Publisher and rare book dealer in poetry, artists' books, and archives. View more on our website at www.granarybooks.com.

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1960s to 1980s, small presses, artists' books, little magazines, poetry

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Granary Books, Inc.

168 Mercer St. #2
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