Leipzig: Galerie de Hochschule fur Grafik un Buchkunst, 1988
21 x 15cm, 4pp announcement card for a retrospective of works from a private collection, one painting reproduced in colour internally to the card. Slight damaged with close tears and handling creases. ...
Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1988
10 x 14cm, 1pp. Artist's card with an aggressive text about Finlay's enemy Blum:
Pick
Michel Blum
petal by
petal
Finlay compares this to the "flaying of Marsyas" the satyr who upset Apollo and was killed in the most painful manner. Finlay is suggesting a similar fate, albeit only in metaphor, for Michel Blum the "intellectual terrorist". VG+.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1988 12.5 × 10cm, 8pp plus wrappers and printed red dust jacket. Artist book with three definitions for the word ‘swastika’ which show the symbolism can have different meanings and not all negative - Finlay has dedicated to Stephane Paoli, Catherine Millet and Michel Blum who all stupidly accused Finlay of being a Nazi when they saw an anti-fascist artwork which included a swastika. VG+. Very scare publication....
Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1988
11.2 x 16.5cm, 1pp. Artist's card with two quotes - the first by Michael Archer in Art Monthly attacking Finlay for suggesting that Waldemar should be repatriated and pointing out the critic was from Berkshire not Poland.
The second quote suggests that Berkshire "is the sort of county that given half a chance would impose a toll to keep out the riff-raff and as such it attracts the sort of riff-raff who have acquired sufficient money to be allowed in...
Little Sparta: Finlay, 23 February 1988
Standard hand addressed DL manilla postal envelope to Inez Horst-Aletrino. Notable for the black rubber stamp impression added by Finlay to the front: "WHAT IS NOT RESOLVED IN LANGUAGE IS RESOLVED IN BLOOD" . Return address stamping on back. Slightly roughly opened.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1988
8.8 x 8cm, 12pp (accordion fold printed on one side only). Folding artist's card with images of a guillotine blade with four one line poems such as "Hard-edged abstraction" over printed on the image.
The publication is an attack on Michel Blum, Jonathan Hirschfeld and Yves Hayat all of whom had recently accused Finlay of anti-semitism (and had turned on Finlay despite the poet at one point helping him in his personal life). VG+
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Darmstadt: Hessischen Landesmuseum, 1988
21 x 10cm, 6pp announcement card for a show of works by the two colossuses of the, then, contemporary art world in the year after Warhol's death and two years after Beuys' heart attack that took his life. Two b/w images of the artists internally. VG+.
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Berlin: Martin-Gropius Bau, 1988 21 x 10cm, 6pp (single folded sheet). A posthumous retrospective with three works in colour on the front and internally another in b/w. Some ink writing on the inside of the leaflet else VG. ...
Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1988
8.4 x 13cm, 1pp. Artist's card attacking the Guardian art critic Januszczak. The text "Reader, be warned that within this thicket there lurks a name" is a jibe at the Polish name and a slight hint that Finlay regards Januszczak as a thicko. As with some of Finlay's attacks, this might well have been better not published as it hints at a xenophobia (which may have seemed less in 1988) although knowing Finlay he probably saw the profuse use of consonants in the name and thought of nothing else but that is being generous.
Finlay's ire was not to be fired up and a majority of the cards he published in the late 80s were attacks on his enemies. While sometimes amusing, and sometimes well aimed at people who had criticised him mostly unfairly, many are little more than slight barbs and this period of artist card production was not that artistically valid. VG+
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1988
10.1 x 14.8cm, 1pp. Artist's card attacking Michel Blum. The three lines read: "League fo Rights", "League of Bookts" and "League of Whips". VG+.
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Dijon: Association pour la diffusion de l'art Contemporain, 1988
21 x 14cm, 24pp plus card covers and printed grey dustjacket. First edition of this artist's book which claims to reproduce nine sepia-toned portraits of Harly "found in a cigar box by the artist". Geo Harly was a pre-war entertainer it seems and a man who loved his mother. One of 300 numbered copies. VG+.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1988
10.1 x 14.8cm, 1pp. Artist's card with a declaration that mirrors those of the Committee of Public Safety during the French Revolution where (here) Michel Blum) is referred to the Committee of General Security, for his various crimes and asking anyone wishing to offer evidence for or against Blum to write to Finlay. Dull and probably produced in the hope that some dirt on Blum might actually arise from someone reading the card.VG+.
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