Where Are They Now? (The Class of Forty-Seven); with: collection of original process material

New York and London: Richard Minsky and The Talfourd Press, 1990. Deluxe first edition, the artist’s own copy, of Where Are They Now? (The Class of Forty-Seven), a characteristically ambitious livre d’artiste by English artist Tom Phillips (1937-2022), who transforms the roll call of his South London primary school classmates into a meditation on memory, identity, and change. Created in collaboration with two Americans, poet Heather McHugh and book designer Richard Minsky, this is one of ten special leather-bound copies signed by Phillips and Minsky, issued with additional prints. (In homage to the graduation year of the title, an edition of forty-seven (truncated) cloth-bound copies followed.) Tom Phillips retained this working copy of Where Are They Now? for his own reference; it is offered by his Estate, accompanied by a unique collection of printed, photocopied, and manuscript material from the book’s drafting and execution phase. Phillips first tackled the subject of “the class of forty-seven” as a collagist, constructing a series of abstract portraits of his childhood classmates out of clippings from the Boy’s Own Paper and the Girl’s Own Paper. He observed: “No litany will ever stick as fast as the class register at primary school. . . . To exorcise them, to lay their ghosts somehow (on paper at least) I made face-fetishes of each of the thirty. . . . one by one (and one of them myself) fixed by paste and hustled out into the daylight of art. Where are they now? Now in part, here.” The collages were the subject of an 1988 exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery. Working with book artist Richard Minsky, founder of New York City’s Center for Book Arts, Phillips devised a series of creative experiments to generate a livre d’artiste from the collage series. First, he manipulated the portraits, manually and by computer, and shared the resulting images with the poet Heather McHugh. She contributed a short poem inspired by each portrait. Phillips then altered each of McHugh’s poems visually, painting out some of her words to create telegraphic “footnotes” in conversation with her original text. Each page of Where Are They Now? features a portrait by Phillips, the corresponding poem by McHugh, and a hand-colored footnote where art and interpretation meet. As with many of the books in Phillips’s working library, this copy does not conform exactly to the stated inclusions in the colophon, which calls for “three additional pages coloured by Tom Phillips, containing his notations to the colorist.” This copy is accompanied by a hand-colored page representing an earlier state of the eleventh portrait, with variant poem and footnote; a hand-colored page with eleventh portrait and footnote fully colored in their final state (with additional gold paint to the figure’s eye), and an uncolored example of the same page. None of the additional pages contains “notations to the colorist.” An additional hand-colored example of the eleventh portrait and page, also with the additional gold paint, is represented as part of the book’s prospectus announcement: a choice proposed in a typed letter signed by Minsky to Phillips, dated 5 June 1990, included here. “We have to decide what to do on the announcements. Perhaps the fastest is if you work over the correct poem from #10 (“Whirled”) and send it right back to me with a coloring guide.” Although Minsky refers to the portrait as #10 at this stage, this is clearly the portrait and poem (“Whirled”) that would be used for the prospectus announcement, and ordered as #11 in the final book. It is possible that the third hand-colored plate and notations to the colorist we would expect to find with this volume were sent to New York, in response to this letter, so that Minsky could prepare the prospectus announcement for print. In addition to the hand-colored prospectus announcement, the three separate iterations of the “Whirled” portrait, and the letter from Minsky, this copy is accompanied by a unique collection of process material, much of it mentioned in Minsky’s checklist of items mailed to Phillips for review: a handwritten note from Minsky urges Phillips to “double-check the poems/pictures #s!!” The material represented here is: 1. Seven pages of photocopies containing “a copy of the poems with pictures in miniature for identification, as arranged by Heather,” with all poems included and autograph notes in the copies. 2. Fourteen pages of photocopied poems by McHugh with original pen-and-ink and pencil illustrations by Phillips directly over McHugh’s text, representing drafts of the footnotes in the finished work. In his letter, Minsky notes that he is sending Phillips “a complete set of poems numbered to match on Lanaquarelle paper set in 18 pt. type for you to draw on,” and recommends that he make photocopies “to play with.” These drafts are executed on photocopies, per Minsky’s suggestion. The poems represented are numbers 12–20, 22–25, and 31. 3. Four folded folio pages containing nine printed poems by McHugh with light pencil work from Phillips, drafting his erasure work. 4. A set of fourteen proof sheets on Lanaquarelle paper, measuring 11 x 10 inches, containing two portrait images per sheet, each numbered in ink or pencil, “of prints approximately the size they will be in the book.” Minsky states that the series he is sending is missing “the image #7/8,” but images with those two numbers are present here. The Lanaquarelle proofs in hand are missing three images: #1, #10, and #21. 5. A torn half-sheet photocopy of a single image, unnumbered, marked “A.P.” in the plate, of the portrait that would appear as #8 in the final book. This is accompanied by a photocopied sheet labeled “Replacement text for #8 (delete previous version),” with a fifteen-line poem by McHugh. A landmark in modern book arts, accompanied by a rich and unique collection of process material, direct from the studio of Tom Phillips. Single volume, measuring 9.5 x 12.5 inches: [44]. Original full tan morocco lettered in brown to upper board with central inset hand-colored onlay, title stamped in gold to spine. Thirty-one hand-colored mixed media plates, printed on handmade paper; volume hand-numbered VIII (of X) on colophon, and signed by Phillips and Minsky. Accompanied by: bifolium sheet, with prospectus text to first page, containing hand-colored print, poem, and uncolored footnote, measuring 9.5 x 12.75 inches; bifolium sheet, containing hand-colored print, variant poem, and hand-colored footnote, measuring 10 x 11 inches; broadside sheet with hand-colored print, poem, and hand-colored footnote, measuring 9 x 11.75 inches; broadside sheet with uncolored print, poem, and footnote, measuring 9.25 x 12.25 inches. Group of forty-two loose sheets of process material as described in body of description. A few small surface imperfections to binding, lower corners lightly rubbed; light handling wear to process material. (Inventory #: 1004089)