Artist's Books - Unoriginal Sins

13 Feb DISTRIBUTIVE ENTITIES. 1996.

Posted at 20:57h in Artist's Books

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1996
10.6 x 8cm, 20pp plus card covers. Artist's book dedicated to Colin Sackett which can be read in both directions - in one direction every right hand page has the word "runnel" and if turned around and read in the opposite direction the the word repeated is "funnel". Hence in one direct the words run off the page like a stream (a runnel) but in the other move away like the expelled steam from a funnel. Interestingly the name "sackett" is regarded as having the meaning of an opponent - someone who goes opposite to you. VG apart from the staples are a bit rusted.

...

15 Dec UNSIGNED. CHRISTMAS 1995. ONE OF 250 COPIES.

Posted at 11:01h in Artist's Books

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1995
12.5 x 13cm, 48pp plus printed boards Artist's photo-book with twenty-two b/w duotone photographs by David Paterson of sculptures and their sites in Little Sparta.
Finlay has had as a constant theme in his work a trick pof adding "signatures" (usually in a form of a plaque or a ground sculpture) to natural objects - eg "Poussin" at a viewpoint for a hilly landscape. These photographs are all of works that fall into that grouping.
The final photograph is of a boat on Lochen Ech which has as its name "UNSIGNED". One of only 250 such books printed as Christmas gifts by Finlay. VG+>

...

13 Aug FOUND POEM: THE MASTLESS BARGES. 1995.

Posted at 13:16h in Artist's Books

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, n.d.(1995)
9.4 x 9.4cm, 8pp plus card covers and printed dust jacket with a line drawing by Gary Hincks of boats on an estuary. Internally there is a "found" text which Finlay has designated as a poem by adding line breaks:

As they slip up the Torridge to Bideford
on the calm of a summer's evening, their
two or three men seem to walk
on the half mile wide stretch of water and
there are only the little islands of hatchways
and the tall thin stove-pipe exhaust shooting
out pulses of blue smoke

to show where there is a barge.

The quotation is from Basil Greenhill's Sailing for a Living from 1962....

13 Jul THREE WILD FLOWERS. 1995.

Posted at 13:03h in Artist's Books

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1995
10.3 x 10.3cm, 12pp plus typographic card covers. A b/w photograph by Robin Gillanders of wild flowers in the Picpus Cemetary where many of the guillotined dead during the last months of the Terror were buried in mass graves and a text by Finlay:

THREE WILD FLOWERS
Julie Boissard
Adelaide Lienard
Agathe Greaude

These are names of three of the women who were murdered during the Terror and buried in the cemetery. Finlay's suggestion that they be seen as wild flowers re-emerging from the ground is a beautiful memorial. VG+.

...

13 Jul PICPUS. 7 – 9 MESSIDOR AN II DE LA REPUBLIQUE. 1995

Posted at 12:40h in Artist's Books

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1995
13.5 x 9cm, 60pp plus black unprinted boards with red ribbon. A list of all the people murdered during the Terror and buried in the Picpus Cemetery in Paris. The cemetery was only five minutes from the Place de la Nation where the guillotine was set up so was used for the creation of mass graves where where the decapitated bodies were thrown in together without regard for social class.
Finlay has listed here the names of all those killed during 7 - 9 Messidor (the tenth month in the French Republican calendar) in the second year of the Terror (a period which is known as The Grand Terror as the numbers of those condemned rose very greatly before the downfall of Robespierre). These dates in the common calendar are Thursday 25 June 1795 to Saturday 27 June 1795.
By our count this consisted of 116 people of differing station and most noticeable is the number of young lives under 30. Of course the popular view of the Terror is that it was the nobility that were guillotined but that is not true - the majority were working and middle class people accused of anti-revolutionary views and actions.
The red ribbon is a nod to the line of red blood on a guillotined body (obviously it was not a line) and the use of such ribbons tied around a wrist as a memorial to those killed. The black unprinted board an obvious allusion to death.

...

19 Jun SEASONS. 1995.

Posted at 21:03h in Artist's Books

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, n.d. (1995)
8 x 7.7cm, 8pp plus card covers and printed typographic dustjacket. Artist's book with two poems by Finlay.
The texts read:

TWO BOATS
two half-moons

and

TWO BOATS
two snowdrifts

Two visual poems. VG+.
...

10 Jun 1762 – 1794. 1995.

Posted at 13:15h in Artist's Books

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1995 11 x 10.7cm, 12pp plus card covers. Artist's book with a b/w photograph of the grave of Andre de Chenier from the Picpus cemetary (by Robin Gillanders) and a concrete poem by Finlay in the shape of a guillotine blade (the text reads Andre Chenier Des Illes Grecques HORIZON d'acier quie separa noting the fact that the poet was killed by the revolution by the blade.) VG+. ...

21 May BROUNT.

Posted at 13:38h in Artist's Books

Eindhoven: Peninsula, 1995
30 x 21cm, 22pp. Original printed card covers. Artist's book with 6 b/w images by Robin Gillanders of a dog bowl with the name Brount on it. Robespierre wasn't all bad - he greatly loved his dog Brount and took it everywhere. This book, one of my favourites, has the tale of how Robespierre bought his dog and the walks he went on together. VG+

...

24 Feb APPLES. 1995

Posted at 22:27h in Artist's Books

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1995
5.4 x 4.3cm, 8pp, plus card covers and printed cream dust jacket. Internally there is a text:

"Apples are points in the fields of Eragny".

The painting "Fields of Eragny" is by the pointilliste Camille Pissarro - an art style that was made up by coloured dots on the canvas that "mixed in the retina" (although in actuality more like the visual cortex). Hence an apple in the painting would be nothing more than a dot due to both the style and the distance the painter was from the tree. VG+.

...

15 Dec A BOOK OF WILD FLOWERS. CHRISTMAS 1994.

Posted at 11:16h in Artist's Books

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1995
12.5 x 13cm, 48pp plus flower pattern boards and tipped on book title label. Artist's book with ten woodcuts by Gary Hincks of flowers opposite epigrams by Finlay such as

4. A wild flower is a garden flower permeated by morality and poetry."

One of only 250 such books prints as Christmas gifts. VG+

...

16 Oct FOUR TREES. 1994.

Posted at 18:58h in Artist's Books

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, n.d. (1994) 10 x 6.4cm, 16pp plus card covers with French folds. Artist book with four reproductions of watercolours by Ron Costley of four trees - a bonsai tree, an apple tree, a lemon tree and a Christmas tree. On the inner back french fold Finlay lists four names - that of G. Couthon (the French revolutionary leader who has a cripple and had to live in a specially designed wheelchair), Jean-Jacques Rousseau (who grew fruit trees in his orchard), Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (who wrote the poem "The land where the lemon trees bloom..") and Caspar David Friedrich (who painted naked fir trees in one of his most famous works). Hence each painting reflected some aspect of their allotted historical person. One of Finlay's most beautiful books. VG+. ...

13 Jul LIGHTS. 1994.

Posted at 13:24h in Artist's Books

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, n.d.(1994)
15 x 7.4cm, 12pp plus card covers . Internally there are four short lines, one per page:

the lights of Paimpol
the lights of Concarneau
the lights of Le Conquet
the lights of Roscoff
the lights of Quessant
the lights of Walston
shine in the rain

Finlay notes that Walston is a landlocked village on the hillside opposite the author's home.

All the other place names are French coastal communes where the nighttime lights would act as a welcome (and warming) beacon for returning boats. Finlay is suggesting his view of Walston is as welcoming. He dedicates the books to "Ailie". VG+. ...