26 Feb

Posted at 14:59h in Prints + Posters

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1989
40 x 52cm, blue, red and black offset lithograph.A French flag drawn by Hincks has the texts "LIBERTY FOR SOME/EQUALITY FOR SOME/LIBERTY FOR SOME" respectively on each coloured section. The colours of the tricolour (invented as a compromise early during the French Revolution) were the red and blue: the colours of Paris allied to the white of the king. Later after the king was deposed and killed the flag was retained as the nation's flag and never retired even after the rise of Napoleon. The three texts of the work remind one that the revolutionary ideals did not really ever succeed - in fact, one might argue during the Terror, they had already been broken. VG.

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23 Feb

Posted at 20:50h in Proposals

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1989
21 x 14.8cm 8pp booklet designed and with drawings by Gary Hincks after Claude Lorrain. Finlay claims he saw a resemblance between a "coastal area in the south of England and Latium, the leafly coastal country of the later chapters of Virgil's Aneneid." The former presumably is owned by Thompson for whom the proposal was made. Each page has a water colour and a text by Finlay suggesting tree plaques, stone inscriptions and the installation of a "classical gate". Near fine condition.

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20 Feb

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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24 Jan

Posted at 20:29h in Artist's Postcards

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1989
12.8 x 20.3, 2pp card. The card has an appropriated drawing of a hunt in full chase - the hare has the name De Mann over it. Paul de Mann was an important literary critic who alongside Derrida popularised the concept of deconstruction. Finlay WAs clearly no fan. VG+.

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02 Jan

Posted at 13:08h in Invitation Cards

Frankfurt: Galerie Lupke, 2010 30 x 21cm, 2pp. Announcement card (on paper) with a b/w installation image of a Finlay exhibition on the two hundredth anniversary of the French Revolution, short text in German on the back and biography. Folded for mailing else VG. ...

15 Dec

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....

10 Dec

Posted at 15:16h in Artist's Postcards

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1988.
83 x 10.8cm, 4pp - the Xmas card sent out by Finlay in 1988 to friends and clients. The card bears a poem:

A FRAGMENT

When bare black hedgerows
Wear white shadows
And the fields without snow
Face the fire:
a rug

The white shadows are the plumes of snow on the branches and the fields without snow is a visual correspondence of the rug. The other sides of the card are blank - or white like snow. VG+. Scarce....

28 Sep

Posted at 12:37h in Prints + Posters

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1988
30 x 42cm, black on white offset lithograph. One print from a number which Finlay denoted as the Picabia Series (there were red on white versions of these works also). Each of the series is a witty reworking of a well known saying - here "Don't Cast your Revolutions before Swine". A revolution, this poster suggests , should not be wasted on an unwilling or undeserving populus. VG.

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28 Sep

Posted at 12:34h in Prints + Posters

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1988
30 x 42cm, black on white offset lithograph. One print from a number which Finlay denoted as the Picabia Series (there were red on white versions of these works also). Each of the series is a witty reworking of a well known saying - here "Spare the Blade and Spoil the Factions". A suggestion that one should be decisive in one's oppression of your opponents. VG.

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28 Sep

Posted at 12:31h in Prints + Posters

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1988
30 x 42cm, black on white offset lithograph. One print from a number which Finlay denoted as the Picabia Series (there were red on white versions of these works also). Each of the series is a witty reworking of a well known saying - here "Don't Put All Your Heads in One Basket". A reworking of "don't put all your eggs in one basket" but referencing the heads severed from the victims of the Terror. Perhaps revolutionaries should be more careful in how they treat their opponents lest like Robespierre you end up in the same basket.

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28 Sep

Posted at 12:29h in Prints + Posters

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1988
42 X 30cm, black on white offset lithograph. One print from a number which Finlay denoted as the Picabia Series (there were red on white versions of these works also). Each of the series is a witty reworking of a well known saying - here "Parisians Spoil the French" being a remark that might well be not only a glib comment on Paris and its dwellers (with two possible meanings - one posItive, the other less so) but also a reference to the way Paris dominated the country during the years of the French revolution (and had to put down several violent uprisings as a result).

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