ArchivesSpace at the University of Iowa

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This collage is titled "Dante at the Match" and it is based on Phillips' 50th birthday celebration match at the Oval cricket stadium. The invitation on the right side is headed "Tom Phillips and the Rest of the Art World" and lists the players, bowlers, batsmen and umpires, the rest of the art world and those who attended.The left side has collaged fragments of Tom's portraits, a picture of his birthday cake, and a newspaper article that states an urn of Dante's ashes were discovered in Rome. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

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This collage is titled "Dante at the Match" and shows newspaper images of Phillips at bat, the crowd of participants in his 50th birthday celebration at the Oval and a photograph with Frank Auerbach and others. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

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Phillips draws a minotour while in Crete that is the central image in this drawing. He writes that "while I draw Minos, Pella [Erskind-Tullock] plays Parsiphae." A torn drawing of a red heart, as might depicted on a playing card, is collaged onto the lower right corner. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

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Tom Phillips writes about his trip to Japan and regrets not sharing it with Pella Erskind-Tulloch. Images include reproductions of Hiroshima after explosion of the Atomic Bomb interspersed with hand drawn quotes from Dante in the Italian. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

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Preface by Tom Phillips. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

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The Sackner Archive lent the Dante Inferno notebooks, "Trailer," and the archival copy of "Ein Deutsches Requiem," to this exhibition. Other works such as "The Heart of A Humument" and TV Dante were subsequently acquired after the exhibition by the Sackner Archive. The text of this catalogue originates from those published by Waddington Galleries. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

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The booklet with the 26 treated pages has an abstract line drawing on its cover, the booklet with 69 treated pages has the roman numeral "II" on its cover with the title "Les Tres Riches Heures de Fleur." The first booklet describes and illustrates trips to Kenya, Verona, Dusseldorf with Phillips' assistant/bookbinder Pella Erskine Tulloch. He also describes and illustrates her musical tastes. The first sketch of her portrait appears on one of the pages; the Sackner Archive holds the completed painted portrait. In the booklet with 69 treated pages (concertina II), Phillips mentions drawing and painting Pella's portrait and comments on his own activities. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

Scope and Contents This painting depicts a portrait of Pella Erskine-Tulloch in Phillips' studio holding a handbound edition of Phillips' "Dante's Inferno." Tom Phillips describes this painting in "The Portrait Works" as follows: "The title of the picture 'The Dante Binding' refers to the book on which the sitter rests her arms. It was the last thing in the picture to be painted since it did not exist until the final three or four sittings. During the months this portrait took to paint, Pella Erskine-Tulloch and I were involved in designing the three volume binding for the Talfourd Press edition of Dante's Inferno. This sample blank volume was the final prototype. It was a triumphant moment in which the silkscreen cloth and spine-titling I had designed came together in her superbly structured binding: the mere presence of the book (replacing substitute books in earlier sittings) was enough to resolve the picture and propel it towards completion. Dante appears elsewhere in the portrait in the...