Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1987
9.5 x 14cm, 2pp artist's card with text that uses a font similar to the look of chalk on a blackboard. The text suggests that Liberal Democracy needs some sort of leadership and means of promotion much like teacher has in a class. The card appeals for recruits to The Saint-Just Vigilantes. VG+.
Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1987
9.5 x 14cm, 2pp artist's card with text that uses a font similar to the look of chalk on a blackboard. The text reads "He was the first school master of democracy, a severe schoolmaster, who did not temper either truths or warnings or reprimands." -which is from the pro-revolutionary historian Albert Mathiez on Robespierre. Nonetheless Mathiez's description gives an idea of the authoritarianism of the Deputy for Arras. it is fair to say Finlay admired Robespierre's dedication and purity of purpose seeing it as pious without agreeing with the associated murder that it gave rise to. VG+.
Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1987
9.6 x 15.2cm, 1pp artist's card which quoted Catherine Millet: "It is a commonplace to remember that Nazi ideology fed on neo-classicism and pantheism." which of course may have a small amount of truth in it but is far from a reason to see a work of art that is classist and pantheist as fascist, Millet wrote some very stupid things but this was one of the most ridiculous. VG+.
Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1987
16.7 x 13.1cm, 1pp artist's card with a parody of an advertisement for the publication edited by Catherine Millet. The faux advert includes a list of song titles from the war such as "We're gonna hang out the washing on the Siegfried Line" and "The White Cliffs of Dover" - and "other World War II Nazi marching songs".
Millet had attacked Finlay because she had seen a jokey reference on a house washing line at Little Sparta which was labelled "Siegfried Line" and claimed this as proof of Nazi sympathies.
This, of course, to any British person is absurd as the songs were jokey attacks on Hitler sung by troops and civilians during the war - Millet seems not to have known that and as a result made a completely ignorant point. One of the more witty attacks on Millet by Finlay. VG+.
Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1987
164.2 x 12cm,4pp artist's card with a concrete poem where the text "Arbre de la liberte et sa floraison" is shaped to look like a tree. A liberty tree was often planted in France (and the USA before then) as a symbol of the nation's desire for freedom.
Slight crease top left else VG=.
Little Sparta: Committee of Public Safety/Wild Hawthorn Press, n.d.. (1987?) 15 x 21cm, 1pp artist's card quoting two letters by Jonathan Hirschfeld and Michael Schmidt in Art Monthly and the Times Literary Supplement which bear remarkable similarities in their texts - hinting at a deliberate campaign to attack Finlay during the absurd attacks on Finlay that he was somehow a fascist because of his use of swastikas in the imagery of his work. VG+.
Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1987
8 x 19cm, 1pp. Artist's card with a one-word poem:
A ONE-WORD POEM FOR THE LADIES OF ART PRESS, PARIS. 1987.
Knitters!
An attack on Catherine Millet and her assistant Myriam Salomon - comparing them to the women who sat next to the guillotine and knitted as victims were decapitated. VG+.
Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1987
9.6 x 15.2cm, 1pp. Artist's card.
Louis Treize
Louis Quatorze
Louis Quinze
Louis Seize
Louis Cane
The ascending list of French Kings ends with the name of a French modernist abstract painter who eventually returned to figuration and a more naturalistic style. The list of monarchs ended temporarily the House of Bourbon until the temporary restoration post Napoleon. VG+.
Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1987
9.6 x 15.2cm, 1pp. Artist's card with the text "Myriam Salomon owns the Second World War and you are not allowed to mention it." Salomon was Catherine Millet and made public pronouncements about Finlay that linked him to the trial of the former Nazi Klaus Barbie - an actual mass murderer and torturer who was in the Gestapo. Finlay's card is not exactly high art but perhaps can be forgiven when Salomon suggested some similarities between the poet and the real Nazi. VG+.
Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1987
4 x 9.4cm, 4pp. Artist's attack postcard with internally:
Headley and Meulenkamp are being flayed alive -
Cape and The National Trust are growing ass-ears."
Finlay curses his enemies with imagery found in renaissance art and, in particular, the painting Apollo and Marsyas. VG+.
