Bob Cobbing, Visual Art Works (1942-73): A Preliminary Survey

Abstract

• Amongst the papers of Bob Cobbing at the British Library are two lists the poet compiled of his visual art works. Taken together, the lists record 153 works produced between 1942 and 1973. Information from these two documents has been collated to generate a single list, prefaced by an introduction and illustrated by photographs taken by the author of a number of Cobbing’s art works that remain with the poet’s wife and collaborator, Jennifer Cobbing. The purpose of the exercise is to provide a convenient document of reference to the relatively unknown body of visual art works that immediately preceded Cobbing’s emergence as a sound and visual (or concrete) poet in the mid-1960s, and to enjoin to discussion a body of work that, although continuous with the more familiar concrete work that followed, has been little seen since it was first exhibited.