Ian Hamilton Finlay - Unoriginal Sins

07 Aug HOMAGE TO ROBERT LAX. 1974. ORIGINAL PROOF COPY WITH HAND ALTERED TEXT, SIGNED BY FINLAY.

Posted at 18:19h in Artist's Books

Dunsyre: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1974
25.5 x 10.5cm, 12pp plus card covers and printed dustjacket. Artist's book after Robert Lax's style and typography - each page has a group of descending words (often hyphenated) - in order RICHT-HOFEN (in red) /REIN-HART (in black)/CRIM-SON/BLACK/then RICHT-HOFEN and REIN-HART then CRIM-SON and BLACK - the colours reflect the nickname of the Red Baron, and the minimalist black paintings of Reinhart, The combinations of the words changes the meaning of each page as subtle alterations to the word order infers new imagined images.
One the 5th page Finlay has noted that this proof has missed out a hyphen and he has written on that page thus, On the last colophon page has the word Proof written by Finlay in blue ink and the page is signed. VG+. An unique copy.

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20 Jul LANDSCAPE/INTERIOR. 1973.

Posted at 16:11h in Artist's Postcards

Dunsyre: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1973.
8.8 x 19.3cm, 2pp. Artist card with two drawings by Torok which consists of a pink and blue rectangle with horizontal lines denoted as landscape. The second square has the same colouring but has vertical stripes and is labelled Interior. The latter being an image of wallpaper and the former horizons and fields. VG+.

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07 Jul THREE SUNDIALS. 1974. ONE OF 150 SIGNED & NUMBERED COPIES.

Posted at 17:36h in Artist's Books

Exeter: The Rougemont Press, 1974
27 x 20cm, 16pp. Original pictorial card covers. Artist's book comprising three orange and brown offset designs for sundials (one is a centre-fold double page) and brown divider pages. Each is also a visual/concrete poem - for example the double page sheet has four boats - a clipper, a barque, a mumble bee (name of the boat rather than the type) and Snow - again a type of boat. The four sides of the sundial therefore has one each of these boats and represents the four seasons (Spring- clipper/Summer Mumble Bee/Autumn - wood barque and winter - wood snow) hence adding time passing through the year to the daily cycle of hours. This is one of only 150 signed by numbered copies. Near Fine.

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26 Jun GOURD. 1974. SIGNED & NUMBERED BY FINLAY.

Posted at 16:03h in Prints + Posters

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1987
27.9 x 20.9cm, brown on white laid paper silkscreen with a drawing by Ron Costley after Finlay's instructions of a cross section of an aircraft carrier with airplanes and plan from above of the landing strip. Just as certain fruit gourds carry their seeds only at the right moment to discard them to the air so does this weapon of war. One of 350 copies in a light card folder which is signed and numbered in pencil on the back by Finlay. Slight crease bottom left through both folder and print.

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22 Jun HOMAGE TO MALEVICH. 1974. ONE OF 300 SIGNED & NUMBERED EXAMPLES.

Posted at 09:46h in Prints + Posters

Dunsyre: Wild Hawthorn Press, n.d (1974)
28 x 28cm, printed paper folder content of a 28 x 28cm red, blue and black offset lithographic print.
The image is of two world war fighter planes (one on fire having been shot down) and airborne debris - drawn on Finlay's instruction by Michael Harvey.
The style is clearly that of Malevich's Supremacism - an abstract form that used hard edge geometric shapes to create works - in fact Melevich had created a painting of a plane in flight called "Suprematist Composition: Airplane Flying" in 1914/5 which is similar in many ways albeit in different colours.
The Tate Gallery claims that "Finlay has said that Malevich would have seen himself as ‘the best aeroplane’, and that the victim in the dog-fight might be Vladimir Tatlin, a rival Soviet artist."
One of 300 copies signed and numbered by Finlay on the back of the folder. VG.

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06 Jun WILD HAWTHORN WEAPON SERIES. 1973.

Posted at 16:14h in Artist's Postcards

Dunsyre: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1973.
10.2 x 14cm, 2pp. The first of Finlay's cards to feature the Oerlikon cannon (in a painting by Susan Goodricke which gives the weapon a charming air of romance). The name of the gun is altered to O'Erlikon under the image. VG+.

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16 May MOWER IS LESS. 1973.

Posted at 15:49h in Artist's Postcards

Dunsyre: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1973.
10.5 x 15cm, 2pp. A card which has the title text in green on white in a cursive font. A simple pun about cutting grass is also a comment on minimalism - of which this card is an example. VG+.

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07 May SILHOUETTES. 1974.

Posted at 18:00h in Artist's Books

Dunsyre: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1974
29.6 x 12.8cm, 8pp plus card covers and dustjacket. Artist's book which has 8 silhouettes of boats or landscapes drawn by Laurie Clark. Each image has a two-part description underneath - such as HUSH-HUSH CRAFT - Vosper. Vosper according to Finlay was a service launch ie an open boat. The dj here has some spotting but else this is VG+.

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16 Mar HOMAGE TO VICTOR SILVESTER. 1973.

Posted at 16:20h in Artist's Postcards

Dunsyre: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1973.
11.4 x 13.8cm, 2pp. Blue and black on silver - a plan of barrage balloons and torpedo nets in a harbour from the last world war is titled as an homage to Silvester - a famous 1930s dance band leader. Visually the barrage balloons and ships look like some of the dance charts with footsteps that taught amateurs how to do popular moves. VG+.

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07 Mar A PRETTY KETTLE OF FISH. 1974. ONE OF 350 SIGNED & NUMBERED EXAMPLES.

Posted at 18:11h in Artist's Books

Dunsyre: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1974
11.7 x 12cm, 24pp (double folded and printed recto only) plus card covers and printed dustjacket. Artist's book with eight concrete and visual poems such as

ELEGY FOR A

wheelbarr w
o

The "o" becoming the single wheel of the barrow.
There are also images of a wooden sculpture of fish on a line made by Finlay himself. VG+
This is one of 350 signed and numbered copies on colophon.

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16 Feb HOMAGE TO POP ART. 1973.

Posted at 16:26h in Artist's Postcards

Dunsyre: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1973.
10.5 x 15cm, 2pp. Green on white with three drawings by Sydney McK. Glen of a cube, an ice cream cone and an ice cream wafer. Below is a quote "Treat Nature as the Cube, the Cone and the Slider" ( a slider is a Scottish way of referring to a ice cream wafer - there is a rich vernacular around the ice cream van including "oysters", "pokey hats" and thankfully lost mildly racist names such as "blackman", "double blackman" for chocolate wafers. The original quote is from Cezanne - "Treat nature by the cylinder, the sphere, the cone, everything in proper perspective so that each side of an object or a plane is directed towards a central point."
Finlay calls this an homage to pop art - probably because of the use of ice cream imagery matches the interest in day to day common objects in that art movement.
A lot of Finlay's 1970s cards are humorous in content - some what different from his usual stern and serious image. They are not his best work - they amuse for a moment or two but earlier and later works are probably better. VG+.

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24 Oct ARCADIA. 1973.

Posted at 10:47h in Prints + Posters

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1973
30.5 x 61.0cm, two colour offset lithograph with an image (by George Oliver) of a modern tank in leafy camouflage. The word Arcadia below refers to an unspoilt rural paradise.
The Tate Gallery says of this work (and there is little more to add so we quote it here): "In this print, Finlay draws an ironic parallel between this idea of a natural paradise and the camouflage patterns on a tank. There is also an echo of the Latin phrase ‘Et in Arcadia Ego’ (‘I too was in Arcadia’), used by the seventeenth-century French artist Nicolas Poussin in a painting of a group of shepherds discovering a tomb. Like Poussin, Finlay reminds us that death is present everywhere, even in paradise."

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