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Prints + Posters
Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1975
49.7 x 36cm, olive green and black on white screenprint. The line drawing by Ron Costley is a copy of the outline of the original Bernini sculpture of the gods.
There is a text beneath the image: ‘APOLLO AND DAPHNE/ after Bernini/BIBLIOGRAPHY - Ovid, “Metamorphoses”; Rudolf Wittkower, “The Sculptures of Gian Lorenzo Bernini”; Historical Research Unit, Vol. 6, “Uniforms of the SS”’.
The classical story of the pair is one of desire - Apollo being consumed by lust for Daphne (thanks to Eros messing with his motivation) and Daphne desiring to remain chaste (Again this is down to Eros). When Apollo did manage to catch Daphne (presumably with rape his intent) Daphne's father Peneus turned her into an laurel tree - hence saving her virginity.
The Tate Gallery website claims Finlay explained that "the gods and nature ‘were behaving not unlike the Waffen SS’ (who were the first to use a smock with a leaf camouflage pattern, hence its identification with them). This image, in which Daphne is wearing a camouflage smock which replaces ‘nature’, was used as the poster for the exhibition ‘Ian Hamilton Finlay: Collaborations’ at Kettle's Yard, Cambridge, 1977."
One of 300 such prints issued by the press as a limited printed edition. Fine.
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