Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1987
16.8 x 11.5cm, 1pp. Artist's card with a photograph of Greyfriars Bobby: the famous Edinburgh dog which has a statue commemorating its loyalty to its master near Greyfriars Kirk churchyard seemingly living on the grave he was buried in.
Brount was the name of Robespierre's faithful dog which he apparently loved and was left behind when he was guillotined. The parallel appealed to Finlay it seems. VG+.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1987
12.5 x 11.5cm, 2pp card. An appropriated photograph of German soldiers celebrating a direct hit from their artillery battery on a house is sub-captioned by Finlay "Saint-Just Vigilantes celebrate a direct hit on elements of the Headley and Meulenkamp Division of the National Trust". Finlay keeping up his attacks on the duo who offended him by mis-representing Little Sparta as a "Folly" in a book. Meulenkamp additionally used the controversy with Catherine Millet accusing Finlay of pro-Nazi sympathies to attack him again in a Dutch article. It is fair to assume that Finlay chose an image of German soldiers here as a provocation rather than to show any pro-fascist feelings. VG+
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1987
156.5 x 11.7cm, 2pp card. Two quotations - the first from Cobban's History of Modern France which explains how the Great Fear during the French revolution was based on false reporting and a quote from an unidentified London newspaper that Jonathan Cape (who Finlay was at war with over the Follies book) were promoting rumours that were promoted by the Saint-Just Vigilantes group "a romantic Scottish nationalist group". Clearly the S-J Vigilantes were not per se nationalist (some may have been, others certainly were not) and Finlay here is pointing to the way Jonathan Cape tried to befuddle the argument by faking up stories. VG+
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N.P. (Switzerland): Furkaart, 1987 10.5 x 15cm, 2pp postcard issued with a badly photoshopped photograph by Marco Schlbig of Finlay's proposal for the Furka Pass (a "signature" of F. Hodler etched into a found stone - thus "signing" the landscape). VG+. Scarce....
Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, n.d.. (1987) 12.7 x 8.2cm, 4pp artist's card which displays a drawing by Laurie Clark on the front of a row of trees which might be in winter and without leaves - hence the suggestion that they are without breeches. VG+. ...
Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1987
4 x 9.4cm, 4pp. Artist's attack postcard with internally:
Headley and Meulenkamp are being flayed alive -
Cape and The National Trust are growing ass-ears."
Finlay curses his enemies with imagery found in renaissance art and, in particular, the painting Apollo and Marsyas. VG+.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1987
9.6 x 15.2cm, 1pp. Artist's card with the text "Myriam Salomon owns the Second World War and you are not allowed to mention it." Salomon was Catherine Millet and made public pronouncements about Finlay that linked him to the trial of the former Nazi Klaus Barbie - an actual mass murderer and torturer who was in the Gestapo. Finlay's card is not exactly high art but perhaps can be forgiven when Salomon suggested some similarities between the poet and the real Nazi. VG+.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1987
9.6 x 15.2cm, 1pp. Artist's card.
Louis Treize
Louis Quatorze
Louis Quinze
Louis Seize
Louis Cane
The ascending list of French Kings ends with the name of a French modernist abstract painter who eventually returned to figuration and a more naturalistic style. The list of monarchs ended temporarily the House of Bourbon until the temporary restoration post Napoleon. VG+.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1987
8 x 19cm, 1pp. Artist's card with a one-word poem:
A ONE-WORD POEM FOR THE LADIES OF ART PRESS, PARIS. 1987.
Knitters!
An attack on Catherine Millet and her assistant Myriam Salomon - comparing them to the women who sat next to the guillotine and knitted as victims were decapitated. VG+.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1987
14.6 x 11.1cm, 1pp Artist's card with an image of a drum with sticks printed black on red. The card announces "March 15, 1987. 4th anniversary of Strathclyde Region's Assault on the Garden Temple, Little Sparta: how war flies". VG+.
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Berlin: Galerie Jule Kewenig, 1987 15 x 10.5cm, 2pp gallery postcard showing a b/w photograph by Marco de Valdivia of the title work on the front, verso gallery details. ...
Little Sparta: Committee of Public Safety/Wild Hawthorn Press, n.d.. (1987?) 15 x 21cm, 1pp artist's card quoting two letters by Jonathan Hirschfeld and Michael Schmidt in Art Monthly and the Times Literary Supplement which bear remarkable similarities in their texts - hinting at a deliberate campaign to attack Finlay during the absurd attacks on Finlay that he was somehow a fascist because of his use of swastikas in the imagery of his work. VG+. ...