Peter Phillips

British, born 1939

War/Game

© Peter Phillips / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Image downloads are for educational use only. For all other purposes, please see our Obtaining and Using Images page.

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© Peter Phillips / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Image downloads are for educational use only. For all other purposes, please see our Obtaining and Using Images page.

War/Game, 1961

Artwork Details

Materials

oil and wood on canvas

Measurements

support: 84 x 60 inches (213.36 x 152.4 cm); framed: 85 1/2 x 61 5/8 inches (217.17 x 156.5275 cm)

Collection Buffalo AKG Art Museum

Credit

Gift of Seymour H. Knox, Jr., 1964

Accession ID

K1964:33

In 1964, Peter Phillips was awarded a travel fellowship that brought him to New York City, where he lived until 1966. It was there that he realized his approach to artmaking aligned with aspects of American culture and Pop art’s incorporation of commercial iconography. Throughout his body of work, Phillips borrows imagery and hard-edged, precise patterns from game boards, pin-up magazines, comic books, and other everyday sources. War/Game depicts opposing Confederate and Union forces through typical emblems of combat: flags, guns, and uniforms. In works such as this, Phillips combined areas of machine-inspired precision with sections that are more painterly to create assemblage-like compositions. Not unlike artist Robert Indiana, whose work is also in the Albright-Knox's collection, he often returned to similar imagery in multiple compositions.

Label from Giant Steps: Artists and the 1960s, June 30–December 30, 2018