27 Feb

Posted at 15:58h in Artist's Books

Dunsyre, : Wild Hawthorn Press, (1982)
7.5 x 9.5cm, 12pp plus card wrappers and printed white dust jacket.
Artist's book with a drawing of a circle, a classical column and a cube by Ian Gardner. The text is "Volume makes beauty/ and the most beautiful forms" with the latter on the page with the drawings "are the sphere, the cylinder, the cube." a quote from Vitulio from the 12th century. (One is reminded of Paul Cezanne's similar statement).
Finlay has replaced the cylinder with a classical column - changing Vitulio's statement into a promotion of neo-classicism. VG+

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15 Feb

Posted at 15:44h in Artist's Books

Dunsyre, : Wild Hawthorn Press, (1982)
7.5 x 9.5cm, 12pp plus card wrappers and printed pink dust jacket.
Artist's book with two drawings by Ian Gardner - one entitled The Orgy of The Cherries - where the stalks and stones are scattered and L'Idylle de Cerises where the cherries are uneaten and the stalks still attached. The L'Idylle de Cerises is a reference from a chapter heading from Rousseau's Les Confessions. Cherries are associated with sexual pleasure and Rousseau mentions them in a context of mild desire. The book (printed on pink to reflect the colour of the fruit) shows the detritus of cherry eating - with all the stones scattered - as a metaphor for an orgy when all the participants are exhausted and strewn across the bed. VG+.

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10 Feb

Posted at 15:18h in Joseph Beuys Cards 1980 - 23rd January 1986, Joseph Beuys Cards 1980s, Joseph Beuys Postcards

Bonn: Stadtisches Kunstmuseum, 1984
21 x 10cm, 6pp announcement leaflet with a b/w image of a Beuys' work Konzertflugeljom (from 1969) in b/w on the front. Internally details of the exhibition of works from the Ulbricht collection along with details of various talks and events. This example is signed in red felt tipped pen by Beuys on the front cover and is also stamped with an FIU blue impression on the right. VG+.

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27 Jan

Posted at 10:15h in Joseph Beuys Cards 1980 - 23rd January 1986, Joseph Beuys Cards 1980s, Joseph Beuys Postcards

Heidelberg: Edition Staeck, 1982
10.5 x 15cm, 2pp announcement card for a film showing by H. G. Hillgruber with Beuys, Helmut Schmidt and Klaus Staeck. This card is one of a number - each unique - where Beuys has crossed out the word KANZLER (Chancellor) and rubber stamped the card twice and signed it. The card also has a blindstamp impression of a cross, a horse drawn carriage and a woman's face. A variation on Schellmann Nr 442. VG+.

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19 Jan

Posted at 14:57h in Page Works & Contributions

Crown Point Press, 1982
26 x 21cm, two part folding portfolio box with tipped on label. Vision is a monographic journal of contemporary art edited and curated by Tom Marioni. This boxed catalog of artists' photo reproductions, each printed on glossy heavy weight paper. Artists include Vito Acconci, John Baldessari, John Cage, Joan Jonas, Sol LeWitt, Ricahrd Tuttle, Richard Long, Dorothea Rockburne as well as Ian Hamilton Finlay. who has an untitled view of a tree with a swastica band and an axe sculpture. Limited edition but edition size is not noted. VG+ in like box.

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26 Dec

Posted at 15:31h in Artist's Books

Dunsyre, : Wild Hawthorn Press, (1981)
12 x 12cm, 40pp plus card wrappers and printed photo-pictorial dust jacket.
Artist's book where Finlay has placed translations of the Anaximander Fragment (the earliest known extant philosophical thesis) opposite images of a broken classical column and its base found in the extended grounds of Little Sparta (then Stoneypath). The column was of course deliberately partly destroyed as the original artwork. The images, in b/w , were by Harvey Dwight.
The philosophers cited here are Diels, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Jaeger, Weil, Kahn, Kirk, Hussey, Burnet, Lloyd-Jones and Jaspers.
The fragment from Anaximander (600 BC) is a statement about how life has to make way for death out of necessity and each translation has subtle different meanings. Of course, the fact that only a tiny amount of the thoughts of Anaximander has survived into the present day is a mirror of the ruined (by intent) column.
The consideration of man's death is a major theme running through much of Finlay's output - and this falls heavily in the middle of his fascination of momento mori and similar works. VG+ example of a very scarce book.

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23 Dec

Posted at 12:07h in Artist's Books

Dunsyre, : Wild Hawthorn Press, (1981)
17.8 x 13.9cm, light brown outer folder content of three 1pp sheets each with a concrete poem on them. The first two are on blue card and are presumably the two epicurian poems - the first has lines which represents a wafer surrounded by water (a wafer being a dry slice of something may be seen as land and the water as sea hence the whole an island), the second shows descending lines of water and one representing a bird swooping vertically down. These works remind one of a modern typographic equivalent of Apollinaire's calligrammes.
The final work is on orange paper (Finlay often used these colour combinations)and shows a triangle and a circle - the first is meant to be the scent of oranges, the second the scent of pears. The citrus of oranges is sharp like the corners of the triangle. This latter poem is meant to be a paradox and that is because of the shapes - the "Sharp" orange is not round while the pair is not a triangle which broadly is the shape of a pair..
Epicurean philosophy promoted simplicity, enjoyment and calmness as the way to a better life. In modern times the word is more associated with someone who enjoys food. Finlay seems to be happy with the simple life.
These works are usually placed in the artist's book section of Finlay's raisonne but there is a strong case for them to be small prints. But for now we have retained them in the former category. VG+ in like folder.

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