20 Mar

Posted at 21:48h in James Lee Byars

Byars, James Lee Berlin: Galerie R. Springel, 1974 180 x 48cm. Two conjoined sheets of black paper printed in gold. The length of both sheets together is equivalent of Byars height (5’11”). Texts in the top half consist of 100 sentences selected from Shakespeare edited by Byars, containing the word ‘Gold’, the texts in the bottom half consist of texts by H. Szeemann, K. Ruhrberg, T. Deecke, H. Retzner, L. Burkhardt, W. Schmied, M. Haerdter, prof. Eliot. Issued as the “catalogue” for the exhibition “The Golden Tower”, under the artist program, the Berliner Künstlerprogramm des DAAD, 1974. Framed in wood and glass - fine....

16 Mar

Posted at 16:20h in Artist's Postcards

Dunsyre: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1973.
11.4 x 13.8cm, 2pp. Blue and black on silver - a plan of barrage balloons and torpedo nets in a harbour from the last world war is titled as an homage to Silvester - a famous 1930s dance band leader. Visually the barrage balloons and ships look like some of the dance charts with footsteps that taught amateurs how to do popular moves. VG+.

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10 Mar

Posted at 15:22h in Joseph Beuys Postcards

Heidelberg: Edition Staeck, 1974
15 x 10.5cm, 2pp artist's postcard with the title text "Edition Staeck liefert sofort alle gebohnerte un gewichste Ware von Beuys." which roughly translates as "Staeck immediately delivers all polished and unweighted goods from Beuys." This example of this card has been overwritten in red ink by Beuys with a signed dedication. VG+. Schellman: P19.

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07 Mar

Posted at 18:11h in Artist's Books

Dunsyre: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1974
11.7 x 12cm, 24pp (double folded and printed recto only) plus card covers and printed dustjacket. Artist's book with eight concrete and visual poems such as

ELEGY FOR A

wheelbarr w
o

The "o" becoming the single wheel of the barrow.
There are also images of a wooden sculpture of fish on a line made by Finlay himself. VG+
This is one of 350 signed and numbered copies on colophon.

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16 Feb

Posted at 16:26h in Artist's Postcards

Dunsyre: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1973.
10.5 x 15cm, 2pp. Green on white with three drawings by Sydney McK. Glen of a cube, an ice cream cone and an ice cream wafer. Below is a quote "Treat Nature as the Cube, the Cone and the Slider" ( a slider is a Scottish way of referring to a ice cream wafer - there is a rich vernacular around the ice cream van including "oysters", "pokey hats" and thankfully lost mildly racist names such as "blackman", "double blackman" for chocolate wafers. The original quote is from Cezanne - "Treat nature by the cylinder, the sphere, the cone, everything in proper perspective so that each side of an object or a plane is directed towards a central point."
Finlay calls this an homage to pop art - probably because of the use of ice cream imagery matches the interest in day to day common objects in that art movement.
A lot of Finlay's 1970s cards are humorous in content - some what different from his usual stern and serious image. They are not his best work - they amuse for a moment or two but earlier and later works are probably better. VG+.

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