TOM PHILLIPS - THE POSTCARD CENTURY 1900-2000
Thames &Hudson, London 2001.

Ornament of civilization, ephemeral support for human attention and measurer of time and taste - the postcard - includes highest possibilities of interpretation in all of its mass and practical use. Pop-art painter from London, Tom Phillips, who shortly became the member of the Royal Academy, the painter whose paintings are in many worldwide museums' collections, for decades has been passionate collector of different kinds of postcards, which could be reached in his hometown's antique shops and flea markets. By request of famous publisher Thames&Hudson, he made a detailed monograph (or an artistic project-book) called The Postcard Century - 2000 Postcards and Their Messages. That kind of enterprise required careful classification and commenting, because of chosen line of findings, leading all the way back to the first year of century and millennium, which this monograph reproduces, and which contains passion for discovering and penetration. It is not a procedure unknown to Phillips, because his book, The Humument (Human Monument), "studied Victorian novel", showed the principle of collage-joining and creation of a new reality, which is made out of each page's visual shaping and through linking the printed text's lines in that ready-made, kitschy product from the end of 19th century. The book had several editions with the same publisher, which had also published Phillips' latest and persistent description of postcard's specific history. Influential world of this popular product, which appeared in the fall of 1870 in Britain, where we find first records of it, is the biggest visual inventory of civilization, never to be completely described. The examples of tracing the century from the year of 1900, bring numerous callings, species and subjects, and even, if that is possible, readings of the text and its comments. In his wittily written remarks, Phillips traced all subjects he found, and then collected for publishing. Thanks to that, we can closely trace the presence of technology, aviation, leaning on old architecture and exotic things, at first moderated and then more and more intensive role of women, postcard dating, painting, artists who painted for postcard purpose and photographs who done the same, questions of some characters' portrait presentation, descriptions of states and contrasts of a constant artistic theme: how to distinguish text written on the postcard and the circumstances that characterize the picture. There is an actually performed line of fantastic superstructures created by documentary photographs, also shown in numerous genres' development and through public reception of a postcard. The book, by reproducing examples, is abundant with events from postcard's history, for it is the most expressive carrier of public manners, politics, economical issues, periods in life, and fantasies ranging from sexuality to bad humor. By means of (literally) 2000 examples, this book creates an incredible visual influence, and the reader observes conflict nature of Anglo-American civilization (most of the examples belong to that area). Nevertheless, the book does not evade found postcards and comments considering circumstances of personal writings from entirely different parts of the world, which show mediating picture of customs, appearance and recipes for chosen types of landscapes, cities, habits, portraits, painted scenes, drawn caricatures. Such places could be found in Middle East, India, or in Bosnia with its war... These places arouse questions about populism, elitism, patriotism, or about plain evidence, which focus towards this gigantic picture ensemble, justly caused with projection or exhibition as well. Reproduction that goes with this text shows the Battersea Park in the south side of a town. It is one of the postcards, which provoked Phillips to observe the same location trough several postcard examples printed in different years, and which served him in the cycle of paintings, and later in the photos concerning changeability of one place and characteristic visual measurement of transience.