05 Jul

Posted at 15:05h in Artist's Postcards

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1988
8.5 x 12.7cm, 4pp. Artist's card with a reproduced photograph of a Nazi rally where the red swastica flags are brightly coloured against the drab of the uniforms below which the text 'When Pleasures are Like Poppies Spread' (from Rabbie Burns) is continued "or banners in the beds of Roehm's Brown shirts".
Poppies, of course, have became a symbol of war remembrance and the comparison to the banners of evil amongst the crowd seems initially inappropriate but, more deeply, the visual metaphor is perhaps closer to a symbol of forthcoming death. VG+.

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25 Jun

Posted at 22:22h in Prints + Posters

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1988
15.4 x 24.4cm, black and light brown on white card - original linocut reproduced in offset lithograph. The print is folded with a text "Every effect remains in its cause, proceeds from it, and reverts upon it." a quote form Proclus, Elements of Theology. The image is of a group of boats close together in a harbour.
When boats are berthed in such a manner there is a tendency for them to move in synchronicity due to the waves. The classical quotation about cause and effect reflects that movement in some poetic manner. VG although there are sadly two ink lines on the outside of the card (where there is no image) and someone stupidly has not realised what the card was.

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20 Jun

Posted at 16:14h in Artist's Postcards

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1988
13.4 x 8.3cm, 1pp. Artist's card with a parody of the famous Haiku by Basho - here updated to being an attack on Michel Blum. The poem now reads:

old pond
frog pontificating
plop

The "frog" here becomes a charged none-too-acceptable reference to Blum's French nationality and the "plop" infers failure or something more scatalogical.
Not Finlay's finest hour although he use of the word "frog" was probably marginally more acceptable in 1988 than now. VG+.

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23 May

Posted at 19:59h in Proposals

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1988.
Four 29.3 x 38.2cm, offset lithographic prints in a folder - three of the sheets are drawings by Iain Stewart of the proposed column-bases for trees (essentially sculptured bases in stone with text that are placed at the bottom of a tree trunk.
Here the trees are to be planted in doubles next to each other each with a double column-base. There are three sets proposed - TWO FRIENDS - with the names of LeBas and Saint-Just (both comrades in arms and both part of the French Revolutionary Terror); TWO VICTIMS - Camile (Desmoulins) and Lucile, his wife - both of whom were murdered by Robespierre's fiat; and TWO MARTYRS - the brave Corday (Charlotte) who murdered the evil Marat in his bath - but as Finlay points out both were regarded as Martyrs by their supporters.
The forth print in the set acts as explanatory colophon for the portfolio. To my mind one of the best Finlay proposals.
Slight tear bottom right in the folder which minorly affects each print.

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15 May

Posted at 13:51h in Letters + Documents

Little Sparta: Sue Finlay, n.d. (May 1988)
An original vintage xerox (recto) of a circular letter from Sue Finlay to "Inez" (Inez Horst-Aletrino - a Dutch painter who was close to the Finlay family).
Sue Finlay explains that she has just returned from France where she met Donimique Bozo of the Ministry of Culture with her lawyers. She notes the coming election meant it was very hard to meet politicians. She intends returning to meet the Minister of Culture and the President in June.
"Meantime it becomes more and more clear how evil this witch-hunt truly is. Attempts have been made to use the whole machinery for pursuing Nazi war criminals! Jonathan Hirschfield has approached Simon Wiesenthal and the Jewish congress as well as "employing" Michel Blum of the soidisant Ligue des Droits de l'Homme to discredit and destroy us. God alone knows what lengths these people will go to in order to prevent justice being done."
She continues to ask if Inez can help by writing to newspapers and journals.
This was a circular letter sent out to several people (with the name of the recipient written in to the xerox and hand signed.


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05 May

Posted at 16:46h in Artist's Postcards

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1988
17.4 x10.1cm, 2pp. Artist's card with a drawing of a sculptural work where an urn is covered with a flowing material - possibly a shroud. Similar to the editioned print of the same name (which is in red and black) also by Gary Hincks this is a memorial for the Terror and those who died but also an indication of Finlay's commitment to neo-classicist style and his belief that it is radical and confrontational. VG+.

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05 May

Posted at 16:26h in Artist's Postcards

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1988
3.1 x 7.1cm, 4pp with 4pp stapled insert. Artist's card which has the words Sail and Boat on the inside of the white insert both set at an angle perhaps to indicate the physical orientation of both visual images. A minimalist work by Finlay. VG+.

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04 May

Posted at 22:22h in Letters + Documents

Little Sparta: Finlay, 4th May 1988
Two original vintage xerox stapled sheet (both recto) of a letter from Finlay to "Inez" (Inez Horst-Aletrino - a Dutch painter who was close to the Finlay family).
Finlay points out that his life has been a "nightmare" following the accusations of Catherine Millet and he notes he is inclosing for information his statement for a "right of reply" in France as well as a "transcript of the radio broadcast which led to the cancellation of the Versailles project".

Finlay points out that "none of those taking part have ever seen our garden. The broadcast is LIES and INVENTIONS designed to destroy Sue and I. Never before have I encountered such EVIL. It has changed our lives for ever."

An important letter showing the impact the controversy was having on the Finlay family at the time.
JOINT:
Twelve 30 x 21cm, original vintage xerox sheets (all printed recto) with a transcript (in French) of the radio programme hosted by Stephane Paoli in which Catherine Miller, Michel Blum and Catherine Duhamel discuss Finlay and libel him with charges of being anti-Semite. Millet begins by claiming a work (OSSO) has a SS double lightning strike symbol on it and makes the rather simplistic reading of the work that it is pro-nazi. They then raise the matter of Finlay's commission by the French government of a major public work and Blum claims that Finlay's correspondence with the jailed Albert Speer is further proof of national socialist sympathies. The programme continues in the same vein - Millet makes several claims about works in Little Sparta (works she had never seen) that were evidence of National Socialist sympathies eg the washing line that Sue and Ian Finlay joked was called the Seigfried Line (a joke that is obvious to those of British background as there was a popular anti-Hitler song of that name in the second world war "Hang out the washing on the Siegfried Line".
An important document that documents the outrageous way in which the French critics used lies and exaggerations to stoke public anger against Finlay his and eventually cause the commission to be withdrawn by the French Government without any explanation.
joint:
Handwritten cardboard envelope addressed to Inez Horst-Aletino from Finlay.

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04 May

Posted at 22:03h in Artist's Postcards

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1988 15 x 21cm, 2pp. Artist's card with lettering drawn by John R. Nash. The three words - Bark, Barque and Baroque - are not only a progression in the number of letters all based on the phoneme Bar(k) but an increase in sophistication from the plain (wood) to the baroque via the elaborate bargue. Additionally the three words also refer to the three masted sailing ship. VG+. ...

03 May

Posted at 11:26h in Letters + Documents

Little Sparta, Finlay, n.d. A handwritten note on a blue Raspberry republic letterhead (other similar RR letterheads were usually in red but Finlay had a store of different stationery to be used in different situations as suited his needs) to Edward and Sam. +Finlay notes tha "the cats are fed for today. Your can ate eat vegetables from the allotment + the (?) from the pantry (?) ands the freezer.

There are clean clothes on the beds.
Love Ian."
Just a friendly note left for visitors staying at Little Sparta. It is nice to hear the cats were being well looked after. We do not know who Edward and Sam were.

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02 May

Posted at 16:45h in Letters + Documents

Little Sparta: Finlay, n.d. (c. May 1988) An original vintage xerox 30 x 21cm, 1pp statement from Finlay which is worth quoting in full:
"What is happening today in respect of Kurt Waldheim and Paul de Man is not a natural process of criticism - it is the systematic, vivisection, carried out by the obscene Mengales of 'democratic' letters. What is been demanded of fellow men - yes fellow men - is not that they made the correct moral decisions in their own time, not even simply simply that they were super heroes but they predicted and fell in with the pseudo moral linguistic fashions of 40 years on. Very well, let us anticipate the day when our vivisectionists are asked, not what they had to say, with on remarkable hindsight, about the deportation of the Jews, but what they had to say, looking around them, about the deportation of Arabs. And more, let us anticipate the question to be put to us: Did (sic) the huge inhumanity of these Mengales not produce in you a single letter of protest - not one tear in your eye, not one ache in your heart? Oh how brave you are, you who regard yourselves as exempt from history. See how you always fight those battles which others one for you a long time ago."
Kurt Waldheim was an Austrian politician who it was revealed to have been implicated in Nazi mass murder when he tried for a second time to become Austrian President in 1988. Paul de Man was a literary critic and philosopher who after his death had his previously unknown articles supporting collaboration with the Nazi revealed. Finlay seems to be arguing that moral positions cannot be taken aside from the historical context that they were made in. This is probably the least convincing of Finlay's arguments as Waldheim does seem to have known about the murder of Yugoslavian resistance fighters - which perhaps was not known at the time. But one can say it is a valid argument to make even if one does not ultimately agree with it.

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