Madonna Staunton Artists’ Book of Favourite Philosophers

Stunning Madonna Staunton artists’ book, being a mixed-media work combining an oil paint ground of abstract blotchy blues, purples and whites, with stenciled numbers and letraset text, all on canvas, adhered to wooden boards painted blue and green with red yellow and blue stenciled numbers; although we don’t know the particulars of the composition, we suspect the components might have been gathered together from random pieces lying about Staunton’s studio – the canvas is folded to a 6 panel concertina (the first and last panels adhered to the boards), roughly 410 x 1160cm when laid flat; the canvas may have been cut from a larger (possibly unfinished) painting; onto the ground-layers of paint are placed a number of small O’s, random numbers, and words, all in letraset – most prominent of these are the names of philosophers (presumably significant to the artist): Lao-Tzu, Plato, Nietzsche, Pascal, Rousseau, Socrates, Kierkegaard, Mencius, Iris Murdoch, as well as philosphical terms such as good, evil, form, cause, truth, myth; also seen are larger stencilled numbers and letters; the boards consist of two layers of plywood, green over blue, and one thicker piece of pine to left edge of front board – onto the boards are stencilled numbers in olive, red and blue: 2, 7, and 9 to front board and 7, 5, and 9 to rear; Signed and dated in pencil: Madonna Staunton ’96; our research fails to turn up a reference to this work in any Staunton catalogue or bibliography; Please Note: the title “Artists Book of Favourite Philosophers” is this bookseller’s – the work is officially untitled.