Ian Hamilton Finlay - Unoriginal Sins

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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18 Jun THE BICENTENNIAL PROPOSALS: THE FRENCH WAR, THE WAR OF THE LETTER. 1989.

Posted at 19:08h in Exhibition Catalogues

Toronto: Art Metropole, 1989
25 x 16cm, 116pp plus printed wrappers. Exhibition catalogue and monologue examining the dispute between Finlay and Catherine Millet and others with a long sympathetic essay by Peter Day. Works reproduced in b/w throughout. VG+.

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27 Apr GROVE. n. AN IRREGULAR PERISTYLE.

Posted at 17:47h in Prints + Posters

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, n.d.
38 x 45cm, black and cream on white laid paper - the image by Gary Hincks is of a grove of trees around a classical temple after WIlliam Stukely. The definition of Grove is "an irregular peristyle" and a quote from Milton. The pristyle is the corridor between a colonnade and the wall of the inner building - hence the definition here suggests the trees are creating a further group of columns around the building. We do not know the date of this work - wee suspect the late 80s. VG+.

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23 Apr SEVEN DEFINITIONS. PERTAINING TO IDEAL LANDSCAPES. 1989.

Posted at 16:11h in Prints + Posters

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, n.d. (1989)
33.5 x 48.5cm, printed folder with calligraphic text by John Nash. Content of seven 33.5 x 48.5cm, 1pp lithographs in folder. Each work is one of Finlay's later "definitions" works - the structure being that of a word such as GROVE followed by a poetic definition and then a longer quotation from a classical source using the word in a manner that reflects the definition. For instance:

PEACE n. according to St. Ignatius of Loyola the simplicity of order

War on the castles, PEACE to the cabins
Slogan of the French revolutionary armies.

All elements fine in like folder.

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22 Apr SUNDIAL. 1989.

Posted at 11:12h in Poems in folders

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1989
13 x 9.1cm, 4pp light brown outer folder. Internally a 13 x 9.1cm, 4pp sheet with a poem

Sundial
The motto is silent.
The shadow speaks.

The poem emphasises that the true importance on a sundial is the shadow of the gnomon and not the carvings added to it as decoration. The drawing on the cover was by Kathleen Lindsley.
This was one of a series of "poems in folders". VG+.

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20 Apr EIGHT STICKERS FOR SAINT-JUST VIGILANTES. 1989.

Posted at 18:03h in Object + Paper Multiples

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1989
12 x 24cm, unprinted white envelope with sticker closure content of eight different adhesive stickers - sizes vary due to poor cutting post printing but all are c. 14 x 11.5cm, printed red and black. The stickers are all inspired by sayings or events of the French revolution around the year 1793. These were distributed as campaign materials for use by supporters of Finlay during his disputes with Strathclyde regional Council over the rating of Finlay's Garden Temple (which they claimed was an art gallery whereas Finlay stated it was a religious building". All unused, The sealed envelope has been opened using scissors and not too neatly. Not found in Murray.

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08 Mar “THING” POEMS.

Posted at 18:01h in Artist's Postcards

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, n.d. 6 x 9.6cm, 1pp artist's card printed black on green card with a text discussing the difference between a poems subject ("about a thing") and the poem itself (which IS a thing). Semiology for beginners. VG+....

08 Mar CATGUT AND BLOSSOM. JONATHAN WILLIAMS IN ENGLAND. 1989.

Posted at 08:53h in Page Works & Contributions

London: Coracle, 1989
12 x 17.5cm, 60pp plus pictorial boards. A festschrift for Jonathan Williams's 60th birthday. More than three dozen contributors include: Ian Hamilton Finlay, Gael Turnbull, Glen Baxter, R.B. Kitaj, Thomas A. Clark, Richard Caddel, Roy Fisher, Charles Tomlinson, Basil Bunting, Eric Mottram, and Sandra Fisher.
Finlay's contribution is a single page:

Aram Saroyan pays Homage
to Jonathan Williams
on his 60th Birthday.

undoubtedly
avant-
garde

Aram Saroyan was known for his minimalist works and Finlay here parodies the style in honour of his friend Williams. VG+.

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07 Mar 1989: BICENTERNAIRE DE LA REVOLUTION FRANCAISE. 1989.

Posted at 22:34h in Artist's Postcards

Little Sparta: Committee of Public Safety/Wild Hawthorn Press, n.d. (1989) 2.8 x 21.6cm, 4pp. Artist's card with a text:

1989: BICENTERNAIRE DE LA REVOLUTION FRANCAISE
1990: LA LIBERTE DE CELEBRER 1789.

The year after most people define the beginning after the French Revolution the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (Déclaration des droits de l'homme et du citoyen de 1789) was passed by the National Constituent Assembly thus giving citizens the right of free speech. Finlay's card celebrates that occasion which is usually ignored - putting it on an equal status as a highlight of world history. VG+. ...

05 Mar BIRDS FLY, WATERFOWL PLY. 1989.

Posted at 08:59h in Artist's Postcards

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1989
11.4 x 8.9cm, 4pp. Artist's card with a drawing of an abstracted moorland/estuary (very similar to the colourful images used in From 35 One Line Poem postcards published earlier by Finlay - and the text "Birds fly, Waterfoul Ply" - one having the air above the water, the other the water and the moorland but the latter being compared to boats "plying" their trade. Strictly speaking ply means to move regularly over an area or to work steadily - something both boats and land birds tend to do. 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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