Skip to main content

Una Selva Oscura: Tom Phillips's Inferno / Phillips, Tom ; Phillips T ; Ray K., 1997

 Item
Identifier: CC-28695-29997

  • Staff Only
  • Please navigate to collection organization to place requests.

Scope and Contents

This beautifully produced catalogue was published for the exhibition in the Olin Library at Washington University by the curator, scholar and Head of Special Collections, Kevin Ray. It coincided with the exhibition and symposium "The Dual Muse: The Artist as Writer and the Writer as Artist" organized by the Gallery of Art and the International Writers Center. The Sackner Archive lent nine handwritten and typed bound volumes of Phillips' Dante manuscripts, two silkscreen prints, eleven collages from the "Dante Diary," and a typewriter work on backing paper incorporating all the words of Phillips' first translation of the Inferno. Kevin Ray contributed an illuminating essay tracing the history of translations and illustrations of Dante, including the works of Botticelli, Gustave Dore, Blake and Rauschenberg. Ray writes that in the Tom Phillips' Inferno, the artist, incorporates "much of the method he developed in creating A Humument, 'treating' an existing text and making of it something new, he insists on the link between discovery and invention, between what has been and what now is. If we are surprised to find King Kong towering over Manhattan, but also over Florence, it is a momentary surprise, the startled recognition of similitudes, ancient titans bound by their cunning, but less powerful and elemental successors. The image brings past and present together in a single work, an act of translation. If Phillips models Virgil's hands on his own, that link, too startles and delights." -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

Dates

  • Creation: 1997

Creator

Extent

0 See container summary (1 soft cover book + letter (typed) (24 pages) in dust jacket (translucent paper, printed)) : illustrations (some color) ; 30.6 x 23 x .5 cm

Language of Materials

From the Collection: English

Physical Location

box shelf Sackn

Custodial History

The Sackner Archive of Concrete and Visual Poetry, on loan from Ruth and Marvin A. Sackner and the Sackner Family Partnership.

Immediate Source of Acquisition

Gift of Kevin Ray, 1997.

General

Published: St. Louis, Missouri : Special Collections, Washington University Librairies. Signed by: Kevin [Ray] (c.- title page). Inscription: For Ruth & Marvin - To whom this and so much more is owed. With thanks and friendship, Kevin. Nationality of creator: British. General: About 1000 total copies. General: Added by: RED; updated by: MARVIN.

Repository Details

Part of the The Ruth and Marvin Sackner Archive of Concrete and Visual Poetry Repository

Contact:
125 W. Washington St.
Main Library
Iowa City Iowa 52242 United States
319-335-5921