Hamburg: Hamburer Kunsthalle, 1989
15.2 x 15.2cm, 48pp. Original card covers and red dust jacket. An exhibition catalogue for an exhibition themed around Finlay's revolutionary works on the bicentenary of the events in Paris. Eight plates of sculptural works, other images of text works (some translated into German for the first time). Almost an artist's book given the lack of any commentary.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1989 12 x 10cm, 4pp (single folded sheet of card). The text which is embossed (raised) on this card to keep it white like snow reads: Snow, n. a neoclassical precipitation. The drawing (also embossed) is by Gary Hinks. Rather lovely. VG+. Scarce....
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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Edinburgh: Morningstar Press, 1989
12.4 x 18.6cm, 4pp. Printed letterpress. Christmas card black on handmade paper with the text:
Somewhere in the wood was shining the
little red lantern of Christmas...
Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1990
18.7 x 9.3cm, 4pp card. The front and the back of the card has two drawings of a guillotine but one has the blade in place and is labelled "Installation" and the other sans blade is labelled "Event" on the back. The inside of the card is blank. The difference may be that the blade completes the purpose of the structure. VG+.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1989
16.9 x 12cm, 2pp. Blue on white artist's card with a quotation from Lamartine's History of the Girondists regarding the very basic furniture and ornaments found in Robespierre's room. The typography by Julie Farthing is similar to that of Matisse's handwriting and the reference to Duplay is that the latter rented the chambers to Robespierre. There is a neon of this same work. VG+.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1989
14 x 9.5cm, 4pp. Artist's folding card with the text "a line of thin pale red" inside which is a translation from Chenier - the French poet of revolutionary times who was guillotined. The red here being blood and the line that left momentarily from the clean cut of the blade. I do not know if Cutts and Finlay were friends at this point - as the card seems to hint at threat - but both published jointly a similar work together under the aegis of Cutts' Coracle Press a few years earlier. VG+.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1989
15.3 x 11.4cm, 1pp. Artist's card with a technical drawing of a fencing style by Mark Stewart which in its lines and decoration places it as art nouveau and more specifically influenced by C. F. A. Voysey who made textiles with hearts and plants as motifs. If this was ever constructed then it would be rather beautiful. VG+.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1989
17.3 x 14.7cm, 2pp card. The card has a drawing of various classical structures overlaid - the title of Little Sparta which corresponds to Finlay's name for his own farm clearly marks the building, gardens and grounds at Dunsyre as neo-classical. VG+.
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Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1989 10.0 x 12.4cm, 8pp folded card with a proposal for a stone pathway 16'8" x 12" x 3" where the top of the stone becomes gradually more pitted from a smooth start. The inside of the card has a drawing of the proposed stonework by Andrew Townsend. VG+. ...
Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1989
28.6 x 34.5cm, black on white lithograph with two texts describing paintings. Folded sheet that opens to 28.6 x 70cm. The first - A guitar, a wine bottle, the bust of a goddess - we believe is a work by Picasso, the second text an updating of the first - A wine bottle, a pair of binoculars, a gun - is possibly a description of a Saint-Just vigilante waiting for agents of Strathclyde Region to arrive (in reality they did not have guns apart from perhaps a water pistol).
The print was issued during the exhibition Nature Morte at the Galerie Philimene Magers in Koln. VG+.
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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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