Tom Phillips
The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri. Inferno., (1983)
(London): The Talfourd Press
From an edition of 185, this is one of 100 copies comprising the "General Edition." Signed by Phillips in the colophon, and initialed in graphite under all plates.
3054
Three folio volumes. Illustrated with 139 illustrations by Phillips incorporating various graphic processes: silkscreen, etching, blind intaglio, mezzotint, stone lithography, plate lithography, four color offset lithography, letterpress, plus various combinations...
Three folio volumes. Illustrated with 139 illustrations by Phillips incorporating various graphic processes: silkscreen, etching, blind intaglio, mezzotint,
stone lithography, plate lithography, four color offset lithography,
letterpress, plus various combinations of these with occasional hand additions. Phillips began work on his own translation of the Inferno in the mid-1970s, and a completed manuscript with glosses and annotations, dating from circa 1976 appeared on the market in 2020. Also around this time, Dante became an artistic preoccupation for Phillips, beginning with the submission of preliminary designs to the Folio Society for an illustrated edition of the Divine Comedy. Applying the industrial-surrealist aesthetic he developed while working on A Humument - his half-century-long re-envisioning of William Hurrell Mallock's A Human Document - Phillips would end up creating what Mattia Petricola aptly describes as "an attempt to create 'a world to see the Comedy by,'" rather than an illustrative response to the text. "Phillips’s non-figurative (and sometimes even anti-figurative) illustrations for Dante’s Inferno ... are so incredibly diverse in terms of technique, style, and inspiration that those unfamiliar with Phillips’s oeuvre might even doubt that they were all created by the same artist." (Petricola, "A World to See the Comedy by: Tom Phillips's Transmeditations of Dante." Bibliotheca Dantesca, 5, p. 73). Phillips's prints become, in essence, a parallel commentary to the text, much as he set out to do with A Humument; his Inferno, then, should be viewed as the perfect synthesis of his artistic approach. Bound by Pella Erskine-Tulloch to a design on which she collaborated with Phillips. This consists of vellum-backed teal cloth boards bearing a repeating design echoing Phillips's typographic motif; titling on spine also echoes this aesthetic. Housed in the original divided cloth slipcase trimmed in brown morocco. Some natural variations in the vellum, otherwise a fine copy of an important livre d'artiste. Inquire for personalized shipping costs.
stone lithography, plate lithography, four color offset lithography,
letterpress, plus various combinations of these with occasional hand additions. Phillips began work on his own translation of the Inferno in the mid-1970s, and a completed manuscript with glosses and annotations, dating from circa 1976 appeared on the market in 2020. Also around this time, Dante became an artistic preoccupation for Phillips, beginning with the submission of preliminary designs to the Folio Society for an illustrated edition of the Divine Comedy. Applying the industrial-surrealist aesthetic he developed while working on A Humument - his half-century-long re-envisioning of William Hurrell Mallock's A Human Document - Phillips would end up creating what Mattia Petricola aptly describes as "an attempt to create 'a world to see the Comedy by,'" rather than an illustrative response to the text. "Phillips’s non-figurative (and sometimes even anti-figurative) illustrations for Dante’s Inferno ... are so incredibly diverse in terms of technique, style, and inspiration that those unfamiliar with Phillips’s oeuvre might even doubt that they were all created by the same artist." (Petricola, "A World to See the Comedy by: Tom Phillips's Transmeditations of Dante." Bibliotheca Dantesca, 5, p. 73). Phillips's prints become, in essence, a parallel commentary to the text, much as he set out to do with A Humument; his Inferno, then, should be viewed as the perfect synthesis of his artistic approach. Bound by Pella Erskine-Tulloch to a design on which she collaborated with Phillips. This consists of vellum-backed teal cloth boards bearing a repeating design echoing Phillips's typographic motif; titling on spine also echoes this aesthetic. Housed in the original divided cloth slipcase trimmed in brown morocco. Some natural variations in the vellum, otherwise a fine copy of an important livre d'artiste. Inquire for personalized shipping costs.
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