Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1987
4 x 9.4cm, 4pp. Artist's attack postcard with internally:
Headley and Meulenkamp are being flayed alive -
Cape and The National Trust are growing ass-ears."
Finlay curses his enemies with imagery found in renaissance art and, in particular, the painting Apollo and Marsyas. VG+.
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N.p.: n.p., 1987
A standard full colour photographic 35mm slide with an image of a Finlay sculptural intervention in the landscape - here a tree plaque with a relevant name on it installed at the Château de Kerguéhennec. The work is called "Names of plaques, names of trees." The slide was prepared for a book "Art in America" (which is strange given the geographical location of the work pictured). VG+.
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London: Victoria Miro Gallery, 1987
10.5 x 15cm, 8pp announcement card for a solo show of new and old work with a photograph of Little Sparta on the front of the card, internally gallery details. VG+.
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London: Victoria Miro Gallery, 1987
16.8 x 15.5cm, 48pp. Original printed green wrappers . An exhibition catalogue with 22 colour plates of works from the entire span of Finlay's career as an artist plus short essay by Yves Abrioux. One colour photograph of Loch Ech in Little Sparta as frontispiece. VG+.
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London: s.p., n.d. (c. 1987)
15 x 10.5cm, 1pp. Eight different cheaply printed postcards attacking Finlay by the Guardian art critic who had fallen out with the poet.
The attempt at parodying Finlay in a format popularised by the artist is mostly awful. Possibly one card hits the mark but the appropriation of an image from Anselm Kiefer of the artist "heil hitler"-ing is shameful, and most are poor attempts at revenge - one might forgive the drawing of Little Sparta with enemies all around, but the attack on Finlay for not being Scots is simply stupid (Finlay's parents were of Scottish heritage and Januszczak's one possible place of moral high ground was for Finlay's ill advised call for his repatriation given he was British), the claim of hypocrisy over bursaries does not stand up (Finlay took nothing after the dispute with the Arts Council), and the aggressive quote from FInlay whilst slightly damaging is just an example of Finlay's polemic when angry. Angry letters are not meant to be poetry.
Here is a hard truth for Waldemar Januszczak, when he has gone and his columns in a newspaper long forgotten (most newspaper articles are forgotten in a week after all) Finlay will still be celebrated for his artistic achievements. That must hurt. All VG+. Very scarce.
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NYC: n.p., 1987
5 x 5cm, b/w transparency with a detail of the Boltanski installation "Alter to the Chases Highschool" from 1988. Handwritten legend on the plastic - a slide provided by a gallery to press or clients. VG+.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1987
29.6 x 21cm, BLACK on light brown offset lithograph with a series of small digs at the National Trust by quoting the most absurd parts of the "Follies, A National Trust Guide" that had so offended the poet - such as:
ITS REGARD FOR THE ENGLISH PEOPLE
"It's (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: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1987
76 x 58cm, red on white silkscreen print. The line drawing of a guillotine blade has the word LACONIC on it. A laconic person is someone who uses few words - and the falling of a guillotine not only ends a conversation but also the coversationalist. The red is blood of course.
The image we have used here is from a publication - the print we hold is framed in wood and glass and hard to image without reflections - but the work is in VG+ condition.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1987
four gr
13.8 × 15cm, outer folder with printed tipped on label and inside a 9pp (printed recto only) accordion folded sheet with drawings of four gravestones and two plans of the installation for a memorial garden for Annetee von Droste-Hulshoff (1797 - 1848), a 19th-century German writer and composer. The drawings were by Gary Hincks. This is one of two booklets relating to the proposals for a memorial. Unusually for Finlay's proposals both publications might be regarded as artist's books in this format but we have placed them in the same section that the Wild Hawthorn Press used for their listings. VG.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1987
10.2 × 47. 5cm, 4pp single sheet of paper in in unprinted paper folder. The sheet when opened is 10.2 × 95cm. B/w offset lithograph with a proposal for a path entirely made of bricks with the word "Virgil" on them, on the left are texts - the first is a quotation which says "With only slight exaggeration one / might say that Virgil 'discovered' the evening...
Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1987
76 x 58cm, black on white silkscreen print. The line drawing of a guillotine blade has Marshall McLuhan's famous dictum "THE MEDIUM IS THE MESSAGE" on it. It is hard to think of a medium having a more sharp message than this agency of death. Black is used as a colour reference to death.
The image we have used here is from a publication - the print we hold is framed in wood and glass and hard to image without reflections - but the work is in VG+ condition.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1987
63.5 x 24.6cm, b/w screenprint with two drawings by Gary Hincks one above the other. The first is a tower of army drums which leans to the left, the second the same drums but leaning to the right. The drums are a reference to the martyred young drummer boy Bara. Under the first drawing is the word CLASSICAL and under the second, NEOCLASSICAL. The secondary visual correspondence is to architectural columns. VG.
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