paul robertson, Author at Unoriginal Sins

22 Jun PRINZ EUGEN. HOMAGE TO GOMRINGER. 1972. ONE OF 300 SIGNED & NUMBERED EXAMPLES.

Posted at 12:21h in Prints + Posters

Dunsyre: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1972
38 x 51cm black on grey silkscreen with a drawing of the Nazi Admiral Hipper-class heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen by Ron Costley. Prinz Eugen served with Nazi Germany's Kriegsmarine during World War II.
The work is a "homage" to the concrete poet Eugen Gomringer - and by the correspondence of the entitled ship with the artist, FInlay is suggesting Gomringer is a prince amongst poets. One of 300 signed and numbered prints.

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20 Jun BLUE/WATERS/BARK. 1972.

Posted at 10:35h in Artist's Postcards

Dunsyre: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1972
5.4 x 17.6cm, 6pp (single paper sheet printed one side only), the image is a b/w photograph by Dianne Tammes of a tree branch above a stream over laid with the title words - BLUE/WATERS/BARK. "Blue water" is a term usually used to mean deep ocean but here the water is shallow. The addition of the word bark indicates "surface" - hence a shallow stream is the "bark/surface" of a deeper sea. VG+.

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20 Jun IRON SHIP. 1972.

Posted at 09:40h in Artist's Postcards

Dunsyre: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1972
13.5 x 16cm, 2pp - Gardner's drawing of an old fashioned cast metal iron on its side references the sinking of the civil war "Iron Ship" Monitor 16 miles off Cape Hatteras with the loss of sixteen men. Paintings of the ship show it floundering on its side before going down. VG+

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17 Jun JOSEPH BEUYS ZEICHNUNGEN 1949 – 1969. 1972.

Posted at 13:40h in Joseph Beuys Postcards

Dusseldorf: Galerie Schmela, 1972
10.5 x 15cm, 2pp announcement card for a book and exhibition of Beuys drawings with an image of one such drawing by Beuys on the front, verso gallery details. Price of the book was 38 DM. one small pin hole on card else VG+.

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12 Jun KITE. ESTUARY MODEL. 1972.

Posted at 09:32h in Artist's Postcards

Dunsyre: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1972
22.5 x 15cm, 2pp - three colour screenprint with a drawing of sails by Ian Gardner on the front. Brown, and blue are colour associated with Wittgenstein's famous books which discuss the role of context in the understanding of language ("language games") and by extension signifiers such as a drawing. Famously Wittgenstein noted an ambiguous drawing such as the famous rabbit/duck was an example of "seeing that" versus "seeing as".
Here the abstract painting of a sail can also be seen as a river passing through the land to reach the sea. Deeper than one might imagine on first viewing this was also Finlay's largest silkscreen card. VG+

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04 Jun DURER, ICH FUHRE PERSONLICH BAADER + MEINHOFF DURCH DIE DOCUMENTA V. 1972.

Posted at 10:10h in Joseph Beuys Postcards

Bruxelles: POUR ecrire la liberte, n.d. (1972?)
15 x 10.5cm, 2pp. Artist's postcard displaying a b/w image of two placards made by Beuys for Documenta V suggesting the the Red Army Faktion terrorists should be shown around Dokumenta by Durer. Baader and Meinhof were at this point standing trial for terrorist activities in Germany. Verso publisher's details and postcard design. We think this was available in Kassel during Dokumenta but have not been able to confirm this. VG+.

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20 May HOMAGE TO WALTER REEKIE’S RING NETTERS. 1972.

Posted at 09:22h in Artist's Postcards

Dunsyre: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1972
10.5 x 15cm, 2pp - three colour screenprint with images of the Olympic rings on the two colour background red and blue. Design by Costley after Finlay's instruction. The card is a homage to the boat builders Walter Reekie at St. Monans where "ring netters" were built (a form of bottom fishing that was found not to be quite as environmentally destructive as pulling heavier nets over the bottom as the nets were much lighter). The boats are represented here by the rings and the blue is presumably the sea and the red a setting or early morning sky. 1972 was an Olympic year so the card was (unofficially) released as part of those events although those Olympics became the most tragic in history after the terrorist attack on the Israeli athletes.
Finlay re-issued a similar card in 1996 - another Olympic yearVG+.

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19 May SPIRAL BINDING. 1972. ONE OF ONLY 70 SIGNED & NUMBERED EXAMPLES.

Posted at 20:37h in Object + Paper Multiples

Dunsyre: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1972
45 x 18.5cm, orange silkscreen on shaped card with additional triangular card both spiral bound to create a stand-up paper sculpture that resembles a yacht with sails up. This is one of Finlay's most rare works only issued in 70 signed and numbered copies (there were blue versions of the work also). Co-designed with Ron Costley. This examplee has a very slight bend at the top else VG. Murray places this as a print but it is clearly closer to an object multiple and that is where we have catalogued it.

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19 May FAC-SIMILES DOCUMENTS ORIGINAUX ECRITS. 1972. WITH JOINT IMPORTANT ARTIST’S STATEMENT.

Posted at 19:06h in EPHEMERA

Fontainebleau: Musee Municipal Du Costume Militaire, 1972
10.5 x 15cm, 2pp typographic announcement card for a joint show with Jean Le Gac.
On the reverse is an important joint text by the artists which stresses the reasons why they were exhibiting in such a historic museum:

Our work is an attempt to find in the present the means to transmit and preserve the experience that we have of artistic activity: an intellectual journey, marked out by relics (photos, objects, fragments of texts ...

01 May JOSEPH BEUYS: AUSFEGEN. 1972.

Posted at 13:27h in Joseph Beuys Postcards

Berlin: Galerie Rene Block, 1972
10.5 x 15cm, 1pp announcement card for the exhibition that followed the Ausfegen (Sweeping Out) action where Beuys and students cleaned up the Karl-Marx Platza after the May Day march. The rubbish was bagged and taken to the gallery where they were placed on exhibition along with the brooms used in the Aktion. The card has a b/w image of an earlier action with Henning Christiansen taken by Muller-Schnuck. VG+.

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22 Apr CARBON COPY OF SIGNED TYPED LETTER FROM FINLAY TO CHRISTOPHER CARRELL DATED 22 APRIL 1972 WITH HAND ANNOTATIONS.

Posted at 13:04h in Letters + Documents

21 x 17.8, 4pp (each recto only, stapled top left). Original carbon copy of a typed letter on red Wild Hawthorn Press stationery to Christopher Carrell of the Sunderland Ceolfrith Bookshop. A long discussion of the budget and content of a putative exhibition of works by Finlay. at the MacRobert Centre at Stirling University. The original budget and size of the exhibition seems to have been reduced to Finlay's unhappiness but he is willing to continue to create new work. Interestingly the costs to create the works are discussed here as well as other prosaic matters as to why some works are not going to be made - including a fear relating to one glass sculpture that "the students would kick it in". An interesting letter in relation to the way such a show was organised and how Finlay couold easily be upset when things did not go immediately as planned. The letter has some hand-written annotations by Finlay in black in and it is signed in ink by Finlay also. Slight wear but over all VG+.

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21 Apr METAPHOR AND MOTIF. 1972.

Posted at 22:31h in Exhibition Catalogues

Nottingham: The Tarasque Press, 1972
22.5 x 20cm, 28pp plus pictorial wrappers. Exhibition catalogue of show of concrete poetry works edited by Stephen Bann. Contributions by Simon Cutts, Ian Gardner, Stuart Mills and Finlay who has three pages of b/w photographs (4 images) taken by Stuart Mills. Slight grubbiness along outer spine else VG. Scarce Catalogue.

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