Philip Taaffe
Builds paintings out of printed and collaged ornament drawn from every decorative tradition he can find.
Philip Taaffe was born in Elizabeth, New Jersey in 1955 and came to attention in the 1980s with works that took Bridget Riley and Barnett Newman as direct subject matter, remaking their images by hand in collage and relief printing. He then travelled extensively in Morocco, Egypt, India and Latin America and built a practice around ornament: marbled paper, Islamic tilework, botanical and zoological illustration, Celtic and Baroque motif, silkscreened and linocut onto paper and collaged in many layers onto canvas, so the finished surface is dense, decorative and deliberately without hierarchy.
Unique paintings on canvas lead the market, and their construction is the practical consideration: they are built from collaged printed papers in many layers with mixed adhesives and pigments, and lifting, staining and delamination at the edges do occur and are difficult to correct. They should not be varnished. Works on paper are numerous, and Taaffe has produced a substantial output of prints, including monotypes and marbled works that are unique rather than editioned and are frequently misdescribed as prints.
If you own a work by Philip Taaffe
Send photographs and whatever paperwork came with it. The first question is what the work actually is — edition or unique, when, and in what condition — because everything else follows from the answer. A valuation costs nothing and commits you to nothing.
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Whitebank Fine Art is an art advisory and gallery, not an auction house, and is not affiliated with any auction house or with the artist, their estate or their representatives. This page describes the range we advise on. Nothing here is investment advice.