Best known for his text-based posters, artist’s books, and mail art, David Det Hompson—a nom d’art for David E. Thompson—turned to abstract painting later in his career, eventually producing monochromatic layers of encaustic on shaped slabs of concrete or burlap-covered wood. Hompson was associated with the neo-Dadaist movement, Fluxus, during the 1960s and ’70s, drawing attention to the formal quality of letters and words in booklets of statements and anecdotes in which he printed sentences such as, “A university art instructor, after reading a showing of my writings, lit his pipe and said, ‘Please tell me, do you think I should continue to paint?’” Later painting or inscribing abstract figures onto box-like supports that suggest ancient tablets, he ultimately reduced his work down to the support itself, covering them with textured wax skins.
Best known for his text-based posters, artist’s books, and mail art, David Det Hompson—a nom d’art for David E. Thompson—turned to abstract painting later in his career, eventually producing monochromatic layers of encaustic on shaped slabs of concrete or burlap-covered wood. Hompson was associated with the neo-Dadaist movement, Fluxus, during the 1960s and ’70s, drawing attention to the formal quality of letters and words in booklets of statements and anecdotes in which he printed sentences such as, “A university art instructor, after reading a showing of my writings, lit his pipe and said, ‘Please tell me, do you think I should continue to paint?’” Later painting or inscribing abstract figures onto box-like supports that suggest ancient tablets, he ultimately reduced his work down to the support itself, covering them with textured wax skins.