Tom Phillips- Helping to Understand the Vague Definition of "Auratic"

Okay, so this is a link to probably one of the coolest things I've ever seen. Drucker brings this artist up in Chapter 5, which I will be presenting tomorrow, as an example of the "transformed auratic/rare book." The artist's name is Tom Phillips, and although I will talk about him in the context of the chapter tomorrow, I really won't have time to talk enough about how interesting this one piece is. It's a book that entitled "A Humument" (a combination of the words of the original title of the book, "A Human Document," by William H. Mallock, which he found in a bookbin for less than threepence- I'm not sure if that's cheap, but it's noteworthy according to Drucker). In the project, he painted over words in the existing book to create an entirely new narrative/book object. The paintings on the pages around the text he chooses to keep are a wide variety of different subject matter. They also encompass a wide aesthetic array. I think this would be a really interesting way to keep a sketch book or journal if you're like me and have a hard time keeping either of those things. Drucker talks about the way that Phillips has "let free the responsibility of making a new invention," which is something you can see when looking at the images. They are clearly the result of a labor of love and genuine interest versus the execution of an idea. There is a subtle difference between the two, and Drucker's ambiguous definition of auratic books was more defined in my mind after reading about this book and its process.

http://humument.com/gallery/index.html

http://www.tomphillips.co.uk/works.html