Utrecht: Hedensaagse Kunst, 1986 15 x 10.5cm, 1pp announcement card for a show that took place very soon (May 1986) after the artist's sudden death from a heart attack. One b/w photograph of the Manresa aktion from 1966 on the front (taken by Ute Klophais), verso gallery details. VG+....
Utrecht: Hedensaagse Kunst, 1986 15 x 10.5cm, 1pp announcement card for a show that took place very soon (May 1986) after the artist's sudden death from a heart attack. One b/w photograph of Beuys looking at the installation Kreuzaktion from 1969 on the front (taken by Bernd Jansen), verso gallery details. VG+....
Utrecht: Hedensaagse Kunst, 1986 15 x 10.5cm, 4pp announcement card for a show that took place very soon (May 1986) after the artist's sudden death from a heart attack. One colour image of a drawing on the front, internally and back gallery details. VG+....
Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1986
Folded empty DL manilla envelope with black rubber stamp impression with the text: "THE FACTS IN THE CASE OF IAN HAMILTON FINLAY".
This was an original small work sent by Finlay to Peter Townsend. It is a comment on Finlay's fight with Catherine Millet who bizarrely and wrongly accused Finlay of being an anti-semite. The envelope of course had no facts inside it - which was Finlay's view of his accuser's arguments. Unique thus. We presume other such envelopes were created given that Finlay had the rubber stamp made but we have never seen another example.
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Little Sparta: Finlay, n.d. (1986)
Standard hand addressed DL manilla postal envelope notable for many red and blue rubber stamp impression added by Finlay to the front and the back. Sent as a gift to the editor of Art Monthly, Peter Townsend (not the musician).
JOINT:
15 x 21cm, black ink on paper - with a handwritten note to Townsend: "A little medley of "insulting" war stamps. Evidently authoritarians are people of very delicate sensibilities and very little capacity to read and think.". VG.
JOINT:
A standard mailing envelope hand addressed to The Editor Art Monthly by Finlay and rubber stamped with "The peopole has a right to rigorous bureaucracy.". Opened neatly.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1986
11 x 9cm, 20pp plus overside printed card wrappers. Quotations from Hereclitus are used to illuminate the missile attack on HMS Sheffield on 4 May 1982. The classical words all regard the transformation of water and air into fire - which ends with the quote "Exocet steers all." which is the line about Zeus - "Lightning steers all" but with the name of the missile replacing the God's weapon of choice. Finally a polarised image of the horrific attack on the warship is reproduced in b/w. VG+.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1986
7.6 x 8cm, printed outer folder content of six 7.6 x 8cm, 1pp cards. Each card has a drawing of a guillotine blade by Hincks with a quotation on it such as:
"The government of the Revolution is the despotism of liberty against tyranny. Terror is an emanation of virtue."
by Robespierre. Other quotes are from Denis Diderot, Nicolas Poussin and from Finlay himself who writes:
"Terror is the piety of the Revolution".
Finlay saw The Terror as in some sense pure - which was not an acceptance of the acts of the despots but a metaphysical impression of the firm beliefs of the Terrorists as being virtuous. The guillotine is often an image used in Finlay's works that stands for that purity as well as the fear and evil of man. VG+.
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Nice: Galerie des Ponchettes, 1986
28 x 21.7cm, 36pp plus card covers and dustjacket. Exhibition catalogue for an exhibition of shadow works (Les Ombres), Les Silhouettes (images of cheaply made cardboard dolls), and the comic performance works (Les Theatres). Images of works in b/w and colour. Essays in French by Jacques Ohhayon and Fumi Yosano. VG+.
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Byars, James Lee THE PHILOSOPHICAL PALACE. 1986. Düsseldorf: Städtische Kunsthalle, 1986 26 x 18cm, gold cardboard slipcase content of a 25.5 x 17.5cm, 148pp book with gold embossed black boards. Exhibition catalogue for the "James Lee Byars, Palace of Philosophy” exhibition. Texts in English and German. Illustrated throughout in colour and b/w. Fine. INSERTED Byars, James Lee THE SPINNING ORACLE….. N.p. (Dusseldorf): n.p., n.d.d (1986) 30 x 21cm, 2pp. Gold on black printed text in Byars’ facsimile hand on one side and a text in German (printed in a typographic font) on the other. Folded with two horizontal creases. Scarce ephemera / print....
Cincinnati: University of Cincinnati, 1986 28 x 21.5cm, 1pp black on white small poster for a lecture and show of films by Jud Yalkut. VG....
London: Jonathan Cape, 1986
21.4 x 14.7cm, 5664pp plus original boards and pictorial dust jacket. First edition of this "guide" to "follies". This was the book that made Finlay so angry because of the short review of Stoneypath (later Little Sparta) and his ire is understandable. The paragraph reads:
Near the village of DUNSYRE about two miles west of the Peebles-Lanark border is Stoneypath, a bogland garden developed from 1967 onwards by the peet Ian Hamilton Finlay. it is a fine and justly famed new garden, but although there isd an Apollo Temple, a broken column or two, and an avalanche of poetic mottoes and inscriptions, the insistent namedropping of pastoral painters and writers and garden theorists tend to get on one's nerves. Everything in Stoneypath is on such a small and fragile scale that one starts hankering for something more manly, like a Wallace monument or a sturdy Gothick eye catcher."
Given Little Sparta has been voted by artists, critics and the general public to be the greatest Scottish artwork of modern times, it is fair to judge Gwyn Headley and Wim Meulenkamp harshly. Their comment " insistent namedropping" is crass and clearly shows that the works they saw were beyond their capabilities. VG+.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, n.d.. (1986)
12.7 x 8.2cm, 2pp printed green and black on cream card. A text by Anthony Blunt (then the Queen's curator and later to be revealed as a traitor) from his book "The Paintings Of Poussin" explains the work Et in Arcadia Ego (Blunt refers to it as the Arcadian Shepherds - a lesser used title) which Finlay has often referred to in his works. The text has been altered however to suggest that the message on the tomb in the painting says "Terror" and Virtue" instead of Et In Arcadia ego. Finlay has referenced the French Revolution by this substitution and his view that terror was a direct consequence of virtue and that the former is somehow a pure form of conscience.
On the back of the card is a reminder on the third anniversary of the "Strathclyde Region's assault on the Garden Temple" where the local authority took in lieu of disputed rates two works by Finlay. The card complains that the Scottish Arts Council and the Secretary of State for Scotland and the Arts Minister have not "upheld the law" in the artist's opinion. VG+. ...