IAN HAMILTON FINLAY

ARTIST’S POSTCARDS

HOMAGE TO MAX BILL. WILD HAWTHORN WEAPONS SERIES. 1974

Dunsyre: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1975.
15 x 10.5cm, 2pp. Artist's postcard with a b/w image of an Oerlikon cannon set above a text in English, German and French, about the siting of sculptures:
"Poised against a natural background of vegetation, sculpture can inform the landscape or a garden with a new and tranquillising significance which the beholder finds spontaneously communicated to himself."
Apart from the ironies of "tranquillising" and "spontaneously communicated" when referring to a faster than sound weapon system are dark humour, this is one of Finlay's many cards that show weapons hidden in countryside (hence a reference to the Poussin painting "Et in Arcadia Ego") but also is a "homage" to Max Bill the designer and architect in that the gun's hard edges has similarities to certain works by him and in that the quote is from one of his books on architectural theory.. VG+.

NATIONAL FLAGS SERIES: ARCADIA. 1975.

Dunsyre: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1975.
10.5 x 15cm, 2pp. The second of four "National Flags" created by Finlay - here a green rectangle with a skull and crossbones top left. Arcadia, was of course, a rural utopia, a place of perfection but in its most famous form it is in the Poussin painting ET ARCADIA EGO where a crypt is found with the inscription carved on it. It is a reminder of humanity's fate to die no matter how wonderful the life one lives. The "pirate" symbol here has the same function although the flag taken as a whole would suggest the viewer should be cautious. Finlay has created many words based on the Poussin. VG+

NATIONAL FLAGS SERIES: CYTHERA. 1975.

Dunsyre: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1975.
10.5 x 15cm, 2pp. The one of a series of "National Flags" created by Finlay - here a rectangle with cross hatching in green and light yellow. Cytheria is a reference to several things - the mythical country, the painting "Journey to Cytheria" which Finlay has created prints and works about before and less known a bee which has green and yellow stripes. The colours nonetheless have the feel of those of an island landscape (vegetation and sand) and that is probably the more likely visual correspondence here. A flag for a desirable place to visit. VG+.

Karl Torok

FLOTTE DE PECHE. FLUTE OF THE PEACH. 1975.

Dunsyre: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1975
15 x 10.5cm, 2pp. The bilingual texts have different meanings: in French Flotte de Peche is fishing fleet whereas the English Peach Flute is a musical instrument as well Flyte being a Dutch cargo boat (sometimes a French version of the same ship). Finlay also often uses fruit (because of their shapes being like hulls) as metaphors for boats. This work later was recreated as a neon in which the two groups of words are designed to look like ships with masts and hulls making the meaning much more obvious. VG+.

NATIONAL FLAGS SERIES: UTOPIA. 1975.

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1975
10.5 x 15cm, 2pp. Artist's card - the first in a series of cards showing fictional flags for mythical places. Here Utopia - the flag is white silkscreened onto a white card. Verso details. VG+. One of the scarcer "flag" cards to find.

ROTKEHLCHEN. 1975.

Dunsyre: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1975
15 x 10.5cm, 1pp. A photograph of a model of a Nazi fighter plane (which appears to be a Messerschmitt ME 163 Komet) which has had the underside of the fuselage artificially coloured red in the image. The German title means robin (the red breasted small bird). The Messerschmitt was the only rocket powered fighter plane and very very fast. It turned out not to be that reliable an interceptor so it was rarely encountered - a little like the bird that is seasonal althougn we do not think that co-incidence was in Finlay's thinking when making this card. VG+.

LULLABY. 1975.

Dunsyre: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1975
15 x 10.5cm, 2pp. The front of the card with a drawing by John Andrew of stored planes with partially raised wings to allow more to be stored together (probably in the guts of an aircraft carried) is compared with birds in the nest and the lulling of a lullaby. This image is also found as a print and on various other Finlay works - and is discussed elsewhere on this site. VG+.
JOINT WITH:
Stanard white mailing envelope with printed Wild Hawthorn Press address on it. Unmailed.

John Andrew

SAIL/STAMP. 1975.

Dunsyre: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1975
10.5 x 15cm, 2pp. The two sides of this card mostly reflect the design of each other - on one the standard stamp/postcard design (with a vertical line) and on the other a mirror image of the design in blue but where the square is denoted as "stamp" it instead says "sail" and the vertical line has become a horizontal sea horizon. Hence the blue side becomes an abstract seascape with a boat. VG+.
JOINT WITH: Original hand addressed card envelope to Seamus Coney who edited some of Finlay's artist books that were published in the USA>

PANZER AM WALDRANDE. 1975.

Dunsyre: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1975
13.2 x 10.5cm, 2pp. A line drawing by Jim Nicholson of a forest scene with poppies in the foreground is given the title by Finlay of "Panzer at the forest edge" in German. The camouflage of the tank seems to be perfect as one cannot see it in the drawing (in fact it is not there).
Perhaps the poppies - a flower associated with remembrance of war dead - are there to remind one of a destroyed tank (and there are references to such a rout of the German armoured force in the literature where 14 tanks were destroyed at 'the edge of the forrest" but that may be coincidence. IN any case one of several cards that uses the idea of tanks in a landscape as a momento mori. VG+.

JIM NICHOLSON

CHERRY STONES. 1975.

Dunsyre: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1975
10.1 x 14.7cm, 2pp. A photograph by Paterson of two model rockets (with wings) coming out of thick cloud (cotton wool) is identified as two V1s of the Kirschkern (Cherry Stone) project. The V1 was the much feared German "flying bomb" that was used indiscriminately against the British population in and around London during the blitz
Much like a cherry stone that one bites onto without warning, these bombs would fall without warning (if you heard the sound of them falling then you were safe as the auditory waves followed the missile's path because of speed - cf the theme of the wonderful Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon)> A cherry stone might hurt your crunching teeth and the German codename for the missile project reinforces that consideration. VG+.

Dave Paterson

MARINE PROTOTYPES. 1975.

Dunsyre: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1975
14.7 x 11cm, 2pp. Two photographs are shown - one of a harbour with a boat (LH 62 - a trawler) and below it (by Vic Smeed) a commercial image of four modern irons with model numbers and the brand name Sunbeam in front of them. The visual correspondence is in the shape of the front of the irons and the prow of the boat. And the numbers on both images allow Finlay to suggest that the subject of the photographs are prototypes of each other. VG+.

Vic Smeed

THE DIVIDED MEADOWS OF APHRODITE. 1975.

Dunsyre: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1975
15 x 10.5cm, 2pp. A drawing by Gary Hincks of the deck of an aircraft carrier is labelled with the Greek and the English quotation - the divided meadows of Aphrodite. As discussed elsewhere on this site (a blanket in the object multiples section) this does not only reference the verdant landscapes of the classical Greerk gods but also is a sexual metaphor for the goddess' labia. The drawing shows the red path where the planes take off and land on - which is clearly a visual reference to the vaginal opening. VG+

Gary Hincks