Tom Phillips
Paintings &c
MCMLXV-LXXI

Pages [2-3]

tom phillips
THE POSTCARD VISION
n.b. I refer throughout to currently available photographically based postcards.

Categories and characteristics to be examined with a view to isolating the elements to be incorporated in the definitive postcards.

General Categories

1. I had not known death had undone so many.



2. News from another planet.



3. Et in arcadia ego.



4. National cliche compendium (kilted bagpiper in the heather seen through thistles with inset of haggis)



5. Pastoral/Historical. (carless technicolor tudor)



6. O chateaux, O saisons
   
   etc.

Categories of event in postcards

1. lamp-post bisections (e.g. red car bisected. Bournemouth flower-bed bisection)



2. Occlusions (various) ('an object leads us to suppose there are other objects behind it' - Bunuel.)



3. Time of day. (the fixing of the event or stage of an event by the presence of a clock including possible erroneous information of stopped clocks)



4. Performance of extant theatre/music compositions (inc. water yam excerpts - george brecht, and pieces by christian wolff etc.)



5. Performances of unknown pieces (constituting in this case performances of Postcard Compositions op. xi by tom phillips
   
   viz. BUY A POSTCARD. ASSUME THAT THE POSTCARD DEPICTS THE PERFORMANCE OF A PIECE. DEDUCE THE RULES OF THE PIECE. PERFORM IT.



6. Secret and minor rites and customs, etc.

CHARACTERISTICS OF THE POSTCARD.
axioms

1. Postcard Reality has a higher incidence of red cards and a higher incidence of people in bright red or (tricromatic-type) blue clothes than 'real life'.



2. People On Postcards (P.O.P.'s) may be dead when the postcard is purchased.



3. Fixtures and fittings may predominate over the intended subject (road signs, lamp-posts etc.).



4. P.O.P's are randomly selected and indulge in unconsidered practises and are not noticed by the Blind Photographer.



5. The postcard does not constitute proof that anything happened or that anything was any colour or that there were clouds in the sky.



6. The acknowledged content of a postcard is often a subordinate feature visually, socially etc.



7. The misprint is perhaps the postcards own solution to its banality.



8. Everything in the world exists in order to end up as a postcard (mallarmé adapted).



9. The postcard you buy in Madeira is printed in the Isle of Wight and the postcards of the Isle of Wight are printed Czechoslovakia, obeying some unwritten international code of fair play. Occasionally there is foul play as in the example of the postcard of Bournemouth hideously misrepresented by bad registration) printed as propaganda in Scarborough.

tomphillips.co.uk  > >  Essays and Exhibitions  > >  Dartington 1971