07 Jun

Posted at 08:50h in DELUXE ARTIST’S BOOKS

Kõln: Salon Verlag, 1999
17 x 12cm, 32pp. plus slightly oversize wrappers. There are 30 b/w portraits of young men and women in their teens placed on a graph-lined back ground and their dates of birth with a space for their later death dates. All the people were born in the mid 70s. One of 1,000 numbered copies. VG+.

INSERTED AS ISSUED:
17 x 12cm, 1pp single lined sheet with an original photograph of a young man tipped on - the image that was used in the book. The back of the sheet is signed in pen by Boltanski. The sheet is in a glassine envelope.
This is one of the first 50 numbered copies of the book and the image used corresponds to the page of the same number - here 15 - hence each deluxe copy (up to number 30) has the original photograph used for the publication.

So Schnell translates to "So Fast" perhaps a reference to how quickly time passes, All in original printed slipcase.VG+. ...

02 Jun

Posted at 21:38h in Artist's Postcards

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1999
9.6 x 14cm, 1pp, black on white artist's card.

The gods went home, and everything beautiful,/everything lofty they took with them, all colours, all life's tones.

A quotation from Schiller written on 13 July 1998. Published in Autumn this card shows regret for the lack of colour as the fall approaches (if we ignore the colours of leaves). VG+.

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28 May

Posted at 15:44h in NEWSPAPERS

Paris: Le Monde, 28 Mai 1999
46 x 32cm, 38pp. A single number of the important Parisian tabloid daily newspaper which has given a full page to Boltanski as part of a "carte blanche" art project. Boltanski has supplied a fiull page image on Page 33 of an appropriated vintage photograph of a young Jewish girl with a party hat and costume. The fete de Pourim is a commemoration of the saving of the Jewish people from Haman who had plotted a pogrom according to the Book of Esther in the Old Testiment. Often children would wear fancy dress which seems to be the story here. Apart from those visual clues - there is no other information about the image - a typical Boltanski strategy to disrupt narrative. VG+.

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27 May

Posted at 20:33h in Poems in folders

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, n.d. (1999?)
8 x 20.5cm, 4pp outer folded with a black on deep blue drawing of the famous heavy cruiser. Internally there is a 8 x 20.5cm, 4p printed sheet with a poem:

PRINZ EUGEN*
Her nouns were round, her verbs were straight and swift

The poem sees the battleship as a sentence - the actions of this war machine are immediate and once presumes deadly, it's shape and form more aesthetic.
One of Finlay's poems in a folder although the format could be seen as a card. VG+.

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23 May

Posted at 09:15h in David Bellingham

Glasgow: WAX336, 1999
7.3 x 15cm, 2pp. Artist's postcard with AHEAD on one side, and BEHIND on the other printed with white text on gray. Early concrete poem. VG+.

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21 May

Posted at 22:45h in Monographs & Essays

Den Haag: Stroom, n.d. (1999)
27x 19cm, 62pp plus typographic wrappers. A book issued on the installation of Finlay's long planned public sculpture at the Hofvijver where an equally long neglected underground stream re-emerged after being polluted by passing through a municipal dump.
The campaign to improve the water and local environment was eventually successful and Finlay's plaque above the water "ET IN ARCADIA EGO" - usually translated into "I too was in Arcady: is a note that shamed the poverty of the water supply prior to its improvement. Tipped on colour photographs and b/w image throughout as well as texts in Dutch and English by Erik de Jong and Lily van Ginneken.
After some thought we have decided to place this book in the monograph section of this catalogue but it arguably could be an artist's book.

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19 May

Posted at 16:26h in David Bellingham

Glasgow: Wax366, 1999
15 x 21cm, 2pp artist postcard with a colour image of Pavel Buchler reading a book on Marx and Engels upside down - a parallel to the idea that Marx (although we would argue Engels more) turned Hegel upside down. VG+

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05 May

Posted at 21:26h in Artist's Postcards

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1999
10.5 x 7cm, 4pp, black on brown artist's card with a poem from Finlay which is based on a Simon Cutts variation on an original by Samuel Palmer the landscape painter and poet:
loosing
the sheets

open-
ing the
hold

fold-
ing the
last

sail

As discussed elsewhere in these cataloguings, the folding of the sail is related both to maintenance of the boats but also the burial of sailors. VG+.

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03 May

Posted at 16:20h in Artist's Postcards

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1999
8.9 x 10.2cm, 4pp, black on grey artist's card with text from Finlay about a broken plastic model of a Spitfire that has been put away in a cupboard. Finlay muses that as long as the model is not in the bin-bag but in the cupboard then "there is Hope".
Finlay then references Luke 9:62: "Jesus replied,'No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God.'" which encourages the reader to look ahead, be optimistic and not look back to past issues.
A homely which would not be out of place on the daily Radio 4 (UK) morning news section called " Thought for the Day" where religious and humanist ideas are broadcast. Hence the car title. VG+.

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30 Apr

Posted at 16:15h in Artist's Postcards

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1999
12.4 x 8.9cm, 4pp, black on white artist's card with two drawings by Stephen Duncalf of firstly an hat and gloves and cane (a cliche from black and white movies of a "man about town") and then a cockpit of a warplane with two wheels lying against the open glass - as if it has crashed which is labelled "Plane about town".
Possibly one of the least interesting of cards published by the Press. With original unprinted envelope. VG+.

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25 Apr

Posted at 13:34h in Prints + Posters

Eindhoven: October Foundation, n.d. (1999)
42 x 30cm, full colour offset lithograph with an image of a "blue flower". Cornelia Wieg, curator of the Staatliche Galerie Moritzburg in Halle, Germany, took a photograph of a tree bark in the garden of the Novalis Haus in Weissenfels. Finlay digitally rotated a fragment of this photograph by 180 degress and found an abstract "Blue Flower" from the unfinished last novel Heinrich von Ofterdingen (1802) by Novalis, which became a symbol of Romanticism. If one turns the print then one can see the original carving of a date into the tree! One of only 125 such prints issued. VG+.

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22 Apr

Posted at 16:03h in Artist's Postcards

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1999
9.5 x 10cm, 4pp, black on white artist's card with a drawing by Kathleen Lindsley of a stone in a ploughed field next to a wall. Inside there is a poem:

A STONE

A stone turned up by the plough
was carried from the shadow to
lie at the field's edge

where it was found and taken as
ballast to the black hold of a boat.

The fate of the stone to go from blackness to blackness is glum to say the least. Nature is cruel even to the inanimate. VG+.

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