Introduction to A HUMUMENT Home Page

Welcome to the new website of A HUMUMENT, the renowned illustrated book by British artist Tom Phillips.

This site redesign coincides with and celebrates the US publication of the much anticipated 4th edition of A HUMUMENT by Thames and Hudson.

A HUMUMENT is eternally a work in progress. Tom Phillips started his treatment of W.H. Mallock's Victorian novel in the mid sixties and an initial complete version was privately published by the Tetrad Press in 1970.

With Thames and Hudson's first trade edition in 1980 A HUMUMENT rapidly became a cult classic. It was seen to be a defining product of post modernism linking traditions as various as medieval illumination, experimental poetry and non-linear narrative with the procedures of modern art.

In each subsequent edition Tom Phillips has reworked his earliest versions of the novel's pages with the eventual aim of replacing the whole of the book, as it stood in 1970, with new variations.

The release of this website also coincides with a show of recent HUMUMENT paintings and collages at Angela Flowers' Gallery in Manhattan. The exhibition gathers together an important group of further variants in the form of self contained fragments. These gem-like miniatures include a series of collages made for this exhibition which use specifically American materials (largely postcards and sixties comics) to isolate and colourfully reveal further found poems.

Tom Phillips has exhibited extensively throughout the world, including solo exhibitions at Yale University, the National Gallery of Australia, the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, the Victoria and Albert, London's National Portrait Gallery, and the Royal Academy.

For more information about the artist visit this site's biography, or peruse his official website tomphillips.co.uk.

But you're really here to see A HUMUMENT, no?

Visit our gallery, currently offering the full run of the original fine press edition. Be sure to visit us again as we add hundreds of new images, building toward a full HUMUMENT Variorum Edition of all pages ever produced.

Feel free to as well. We enjoy hearing from you.

All best wishes,

John Nick Pull

Editor, tomphillips.co.uk and humument.com