Ian Hamilton Finlay - Unoriginal Sins

28 Jun LACONIC. 1987.

Posted at 18:47h in Prints + Posters

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1987
76 x 58cm, red on white silkscreen print. The line drawing of a guillotine blade has the word LACONIC on it. A laconic person is someone who uses few words - and the falling of a guillotine not only ends a conversation but also the coversationalist. The red is blood of course.
The image we have used here is from a publication - the print we hold is framed in wood and glass and hard to image without reflections - but the work is in VG+ condition.

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28 Jun A REMEMBRANCE OF ANNETTE. THE RUSCHHAUS PROPOSAL. 1987.

Posted at 13:45h in Proposals

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1987
four gr 13.8 × 15cm, outer folder with printed tipped on label and inside a 9pp (printed recto only) accordion folded sheet with drawings of four gravestones and two plans of the installation for a memorial garden for Annetee von Droste-Hulshoff (1797 - 1848), a 19th-century German writer and composer. The drawings were by Gary Hincks. This is one of two booklets relating to the proposals for a memorial. Unusually for Finlay's proposals both publications might be regarded as artist's books in this format but we have placed them in the same section that the Wild Hawthorn Press used for their listings. VG.

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27 Jun A SHADED PATH. 1987.

Posted at 22:22h in Proposals

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1987
10.2 × 47. 5cm, 4pp single sheet of paper in in unprinted paper folder. The sheet when opened is 10.2 × 95cm. B/w offset lithograph with a proposal for a path entirely made of bricks with the word "Virgil" on them, on the left are texts - the first is a quotation which says "With only slight exaggeration one / might say that Virgil 'discovered' the evening...

26 Jun THE MEDIUM IS THE MESSAGE. 1987.

Posted at 18:52h in Prints + Posters

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1987
76 x 58cm, black on white silkscreen print. The line drawing of a guillotine blade has Marshall McLuhan's famous dictum "THE MEDIUM IS THE MESSAGE" on it. It is hard to think of a medium having a more sharp message than this agency of death. Black is used as a colour reference to death.
The image we have used here is from a publication - the print we hold is framed in wood and glass and hard to image without reflections - but the work is in VG+ condition.

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26 Jun CLASSICAL/NEOCLASSICAL. 1987.

Posted at 15:51h in Prints + Posters

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1987
63.5 x 24.6cm, b/w screenprint with two drawings by Gary Hincks one above the other. The first is a tower of army drums which leans to the left, the second the same drums but leaning to the right. The drums are a reference to the martyred young drummer boy Bara. Under the first drawing is the word CLASSICAL and under the second, NEOCLASSICAL. The secondary visual correspondence is to architectural columns. VG.

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18 Jun TWO COLOUR PHOTOGRAPHS OF SCULPTURES 1987.

Posted at 11:10h in Photographs

Two colour photographs (both 10 x 15cm) of two sculptural works by Finlay - Anchors were cast and Sterns stood. Exact date unknown but circa 1987.

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12 Jun INSERT/COVER FOR AUDIO AERTS DOCUMENTA 8 MAGAZINE. 1987.

Posted at 08:59h in Miscellany

London: Audio Arts, 1987
13 x 33.5cm, 1pp - folded. The colour insert for the audio arts magazine - without the cassette - which features Finlay's breakthrough A View to the Temple installation on the cover (guillotines with etched text on blades). The actual magazine did not feature Finlay on the tape so this is cover only. VG+.

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28 May LIGUE DES DROITS DE LE HOMME? 1987.

Posted at 12:40h in Prints + Posters

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1987
42 X 30cm, red and black on white offset lithograph on satin paper. The text is an attack on Michel Blum "terrorist intellectuel" who "deshonore la France."
Blum along with Catherine Millet had attacked Finlay as "anti-semitic" because of his friendship with the architect Albert Speer (who had collaborated with the Nazis) and stopped a major commission from the French government being given to Finlay.
Blum was a member of the Ligue de Droits de L'Homme - hence this poster suggesting Blum was only interested in the rights of SOME men not all.
Blum was a particular egregious critic of Finlay - he knew little of the latter's work and made outrageous claims such as Finlay used swasticas in a large number of works - something that was clearly untrue. VG.

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24 May AND EVEN AS SHE FLED II. 1987.

Posted at 10:07h in Prints + Posters

Dunsyre: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1976
43.2 x 55.8cm offset lithograph in green on white paper. Typography by John R. Nash. The "quotation" is from Ovid's Metamorphoses an epic poem of mythology. Here the quotation is from the story of Apollo and Daphne - the duo forced by Eros to be in emotional conflict with Daphne eventually being saved from ravishment by her father the river god turning her into a tree. But here Finlay has altered the text to make it relevant to the French Revolution during the period of the Terror and in particular replacing Apollo with Saint-Just. There is a "paired" print of this work with the original quotation from Ovid unaltered from the translation (see previous print listing here). VG+.

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30 Apr INTER ARTES ET NATURAM. 1987.

Posted at 14:19h in Exhibition Catalogues

Paris: ARC, Musée d Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, 1987
20.3 x 17.5cm, unpaginated c. 50pp plus card covers and printed typographic dust jacket. Exhibition catalogue for a Finlay solo show from April 30 - June 28, 1987. the text (an essay by Stephen Bann) is in both English and French with each line printed alternatively but in two colours, green and red,; green for French, red for English.
There are 12 colour images of works in situ at the Kroller-Mueller and Little Sparta.VG+.

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16 Apr IAN HAMILTON FINLAY. 1987.

Posted at 15:53h in Invitation Cards

San Diego: Stuart Collection University of California, 1987
21 x 15cm, 4pp card for the installation of a new work by Finlay at the university UNDA. Unda is Latin for Wave and the work is sculptural. In the middle pages of the card a Finlay work (with Gary Hincks) is reproduced - it is not the same work as installed but the inscription at the bottom of the card is the same as the work on stone. VG+.

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09 Apr UNPAINTED LANDSCAPES. 1987.

Posted at 10:06h in Invitation Cards

London: Victoria Miro, n.d. (1987)
12 x 15cm, 4pp. Announcement card for a group show with works by Lothar Baumgarten, Marie Bourget, Thomas Joshua Cooper, Chris Drury, Andy Goldsworthy, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Hamish Fulton, Wolfgang Laib, Nikolaus Lang, Bernard Lassus, Richard Long, Martin Rogers, David Tremlett, and Herman de Vries. The front of the card is a model tank by Finlay and Ian Gardner "Panzer V (Penterai Semi- Reducta) from 1979. VG+.

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