The Philistine Traveler: Slide Opera - SIGNED

New Haven: Philistine Press. 1954. First. Folio.  Two volumes.  416 pp (Volume I - 208 pages, many illustrated. Volume 2 - 208 pages, many illustrated).  Comb-bound with straw covers and cloth ties in planographed cardboard slipcase, planographs from slate and multigraph offsets, pages printed on Mohawk Construction Paper.  Hand-numbered 82 from the edition of 1,000 and signed to title page by both authors.  Some wear to straw at spine, portion of exterior label to slipcase missing, else in fine condition.

A rare and unusual early example of Video Art, Slideopera No. 1 is a "Modern Opera" with artwork and poems by Jones together with music and dialogue recorded by Kent, an amalgam of the life of Davy Crocket, nineteenth century American history, interspersed with biblical texts. The score is intended to be played and read aloud using projected Kodachrome slide images and live or pre-recorded tape music. With an Appendix: 13 articles commissioned for this published score by the authors, from 6 "Internationally known" critics who discuss and analyze various aspects of The Traveller. The intention they seem to have demonstrated in at least one live performance in 1953 was the interaction between the reading of the text, a LP record and a series of photographic slides used in conjunction to form a unique art work. "Dave Taylor" is more of an enigma and we have been unable to pinpoint any other works by him, or details of his career; and it is quite possible that Kent is using a nom-de-plume. Kent studied music at Yale under Paul Hindemith 1944-47 and then became a self-taught visual artist in New Haven. "The Phil. Trav." was his final music composition work - done while he both composed and sculpted. He later showed a print in the 1966 Whitney Annual and had a NYC dealer 1961-67. The New York Times did an article on him in 1998 and he had a retrospective at the Museum of Sex, NYC in 2014 but remains very unknown widely.
  (19674)

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