Artist's Books - Unoriginal Sins

21 Apr 3 SAILBOATS. 1990.

Posted at 07:36h in Artist's Books

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1990
14 x 12.4cm, 4pp and printed card wrappers. The cover drawing of a boat is by Gary Hincks, internally are two poems by Finlay.

3 Sailboats
Juan Gris
Jean Cocteau
Erik Satie

opposite to

3 Sansculottes
Puvis de Chavannes
Camille Pissarro
Jean_Baptiste Corot

Finlay is associating the the thematic interests of the latter three painters (the lives of the poor and oppressed) against the bourgeois interests of Gris, Cocteau and Satie. The sansculottes being the working class mob in Paris during the revolution who could by sheer numbers overthrow the various attempts at moderate government and led eventually to the rise of Robespierre and the Terror. VG+.

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21 Feb THE WARTIME GARDEN. 1990.

Posted at 07:34h in Artist's Books

Edinburgh: Graeme Murray Gallery, 1990
24.5 x 24.5cm, 56pp plus card covers and printed dust jacket with tipped on illustration. A series of drawings by Ron Costley after instructions from Finlay which reinterpret modern weaponry as classical memes. A camouflaged tank is denoted as "GROVE:.
The second part of the book has various relief sculptures which are the same as the drawings in a different medium - a warplane has the word ECHO beside it - the radar being equated to the nymph who was cursed only to speak in echos. The sculptures are by John Andrew. VG+.
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02 Jan WOODPATHS. 1990.

Posted at 16:29h in Artist's Books

Little Sparta: WIld Hawthorn Press, n.d. (1990) 8.7 x 14.4cm, 12pp plus wrappers and printed dustjacket. Artist's book where two sentences by Heidegger have been added to by Finlay with a final sentence.

"In the wood are paths which mostly wind along until they end quite suddenly in an impenetrable thicket".
"They are called woodpaths"
and "They are paths where the heart and the foot walk hand in hand."

The drawing is by Solveig Hill. This is one of only 250 examples. Fine condition....

15 Dec 5 PROVERBS FOR JACOBINS. 1989. SIGNED & DEDICATED BY FINLAY FROM AN EDITION OF 25O COPIES.

Posted at 07:12h in Artist's Books

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1989
11.6 x 7cm, 20pp plus card wrappers and printed dust jacket. Five drawings by Kathleen Lindsley are conjoined with Finlay's pithy proverbs.

"Temper harshness with tolerance, tolerance with justice"

when applied to the Jacobins (the most severe of the French revolutionary political clubs named after the religious order where they initially met) this can be seen as a plea for moderation. Another proverb reads:

"If you want to avoid the worst of the mud, walk in the ruts."

which also alludes to the moral state of the revolutionary club.
This is one of 250 signed copies which is dedicated to "Ian , with love from Ian" in red ink. VG+.

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21 Aug BICENTENARY TEXTS. 1989.

Posted at 06:52h in Artist's Books

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1989
22 x 17.5cm, 20pp plus card wrappers and printed dust jacket. texts by Finlay are reproduced in English and French in a typographic only design. Later these works were reprinted as large posters and exhibited at the 369 Gallery in Edinburgh.

THE BLADE STAINED WITH BLOOD IS NO MORE THE FRENCH REVOLUTION THAND THE ALTAR STAINED WITH BLOOD IS GREECE AND ROME.

and

WE WILL VIEW THE FRENCH REVOLUTION MORE SYMPATHETICALLY IF WE SEE THAT THE FACTIONS REGARDS THEMSELVES AS SOVEREIGN NATIONALS IN A STATE OF WAR.

Finlay both admires the unerring purpose of the Terrorists / revolutionary and sees both the purity and the rot within at the same time. The French translations were by Yves Abrioux. VG+.

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20 Jun BLADES. 1989. ONE OF 250 COPIES.

Posted at 23:11h in Artist's Books

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1989
15.3 x 10.6cm, 16pp plus card wrappers and red dust jacket. Four poetic works all relating to the French revolution. The first is

July 28, 1794
Refreshment for the wild flowers
which is a direct reference to the deaths of the members of the Committee of Public Safety who were the effective dictators of the Terror. The wild flowers being fed blood and bodies.

A Riddle
To those who watch, a waterfall; to its victim, a glacier.
The truth of the relativity of the observer when facing the guillotine.

One of only 250 copies. VG+.

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20 Jun AFTER. 1989.

Posted at 23:01h in Artist's Books

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1989
13.5 x 13cm, 12pp plus silkscreen blue card covers. Drawings by Grahame Jones. The poems in French are all based on those by Verlaine and Denis. The first is
After Verlaine>

Les violons
De l'automne

(Les triangles
Du Printemps..)

One ofFinlay's most lovely of books. VG+.

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03 Mar THERMIDOR. 1989.

Posted at 21:19h in Artist's Books

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1989
21 x 15cm, 30pp with card covers and printed dust jacket. Ten drawings by Laurie Clark based on the ten names of the first decade (week) in the revolutionary calendar. The English translation of the names of the days of the first decade of the month of Thermidor is beneath each French name and the associated drawing. Thermidor was the month when Robespierre and Saint-Just and their colleagues in the Committee of Public Safety were guillotined effectively ending the period of The Terror.
Finlay suggests in an explanatory note at the back fo the book that those ten days become a "kind of via crucis - a Stations of the Jacobin Cross". VG+.

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20 Feb 3 TEXTS. 1989.

Posted at 22:59h in Artist's Books

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1989
13.5 x 13cm, 16pp plus printed brown card covers. Four drawings of proposed texts" for a paved area adjacent to a barn." each drawn by Stephen Raw. Included are the works:
Swallows
Little Matelots

Brown barns
Slower than old beige barges

VG+.

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15 Dec A CONCISE CLASSICAL DICTIONARY. CHRISTMAS 1988. ONE OF ONLY 250 COPIES.

Posted at 22:22h in Artist's Books

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1988
31.4 x 22cm, 52pp plus card covers and dustjacket. A series of "definitions", one of Finlay's innovations in experimental poetry where a word is given an alternative meaning by the addition of a classical or modern quotation. For example:

PATCH, n.
1. A whole part.
The trousers and jumpers of men vary in hue from the brightest orange vermilion to the palest rose pink, and are decorated with every imaginable sort of PATCH.
Peter Anson, The Breton Sardine Fisheries.

As we have noted elsewhere Finlay regards a patch as a symbol of warm, caring as well as poverty.
Slight bumping to corners of the book - else VG+. One of 250 copies published at Christmas 1988....

21 Jul A COUNTRY LANE. 1988.

Posted at 08:07h in Artist's Books

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1988
15.5 x 10.6cm, 24pp with 4pp light green end papers, card covers and printed dust jacket. The full title of the book is "A Country Lane with Stiles" and explains Finlay's putative "country lane" which was expected to be a major installation in the 1988 Glasgow Garden Festival. However Finlay withdrew his involvement in the Festival in protest at the Strathclyde Region's dispute with him over the Garden Temple.
The lane was to be a metaphoric peon to De Stijl the modernist Dutch art movement and Finlay lists the flowers and trees that were to be planted. The rest of the book are poetic considerations of stiles illustrated by Laurie Clark.

STILES 1
Thesis: fence.
Anti-thesis: gate.
Synthesis: stile

One of 500 printed. VG+. Not in Murray's catalogue raisonne.

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02 Mar SWASTICA. 1988

Posted at 21:48h in Artist's Books

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1988 12.5 × 10cm, 8pp plus wrappers and printed red dust jacket. Artist book with three definitions for the word ‘swastika’ which show the symbolism can have different meanings and not all negative - Finlay has dedicated to Stephane Paoli, Catherine Millet and Michel Blum who all stupidly accused Finlay of being a Nazi when they saw an anti-fascist artwork which included a swastika. VG+. Very scare publication....