1263 Heads

green single head
etching on wove paper
plate: 42.2 x 31.4 cm
1979

black/white grid of heads
etching on wove paper
plate 42.5 x 30.5 cm
1979

grid of heads
etching on wove paper
plate 42.2 x 30.8 cm
1979

green grid
etching on wove paper
image 42.2 x 30.2 cm
1979

multiple face black grid
etching on wove paper
plate 42.2 x 30.5 cm
1979

single head purple
etching on wove paper
image 29.8 x 20.3 cm
1979

single head orange
etching on wove paper
image: 11 7/8 x 8 1/8 in. (30.2 x 20.6 cm)
1979

single head burnt sienna
etching on wove paper
image 31.1 x 19.7 cm
1979

single head black background
etching on wove paper
image 41.9 x 29.8 cm
1979

The full title of this series,1263 Heads: I Had Not Known Death Had Undone So Many, is based on a quote from T.S. Eliot and refers to Dante's Inferno. The heads/masks were part of Phillips's explorative process into how to represent the multitude and individuals in the Inferno. He was informed by his collection of African masks. 

From Works and Texts, 1992

The set of etchings I had not known Death had undone so many...starts out with a plate on which are drawn over a thousand heads (1263 to be precise). Plate by plate these small line drawings are subject to a process of elimination until the last few images show, blown up to the size of the whole initital group, those few which seemed to have the most life and emotional charge.

These outline masks also found their way into the book of Dante's Inferno where the 'faces' of the principal characters (Homer Aristotle etc) were derived from an initial cast of a thousand in the same way.