IAN HAMILTON FINLAY

LETTERS + DOCUMENTS

ORIGINAL XEROX COPY OF A PRESS RELEASE DATED 30 APRIL 1988

Little Sparta: Finlay, 30th April 1988
An original vintage xerox 30 x 21cm, 1pp with a Press Release from Finlay relating to the arrestment of £4,600 from their bank accounts by the means of "32 arrestment orders" and that "Strathclyde Region has issued a further 9 arrestment orders" obtaining another £1,850.
Finlay claims that the Strathclyde Region had lied to the Scotsman Arts editor that no money had been taken and therefore the act had not been covered in the newspaper.
Finlay also point out that the Region's Sheriff Officer stated that the money had been "taken in error" but had not been returned to the Finlay accounts by time of writing.
The final humorous sentence states that "a spokesman for the Region has observed that we should have known better than to keep money in our bank account."
It is worth noting that in 1988 Finlay did not have his troubles to seek - the fight with Strathclyde Region over the rating of the Temple building in Little Sparta had not gone away and he was also fighting against the cancellation of a major installation in France (where no doubt the fee would have come in useful given the other financial attacks he was facing such as the above) and vindictive accusations of being a "crypto=fascist".
A copy of the press release distributed by Finlay to friends and supporters as part of the latter's information campaign against his opponents.

ORIGINAL XEROX COPIES OF LETTERS TO THE PRESS & A WIM MEULENKAMP ARTICLE CALLING FINLAY A “CRYPTO-FASCIST” 1988.

Little Sparta: Finlay, 1988
Five original vintage xeroxes each 30 x 21cm, 1pp with press cuttings (all 1988) from The Times Literary Supplement, The Scotsman (2), and two unidentified Dutch newspapers reproducing letters to the Editor and articles about Finlay as well as one by Wim Meulenkamp (one of Finlay's accusers) in which he responds to positive support for Finlay from the Kroller-Muller museum and outrageously calls Finlay once again a "crypto-fascist".
One article in the Scotsman Arts Review of May 23 1998 is by Duncan Macmillan (who for once gets it right) describes the original commission in details - clearly fed background on the various meanings of the proposed work by Finlay - in some detail. It makes one regret the work never having been made.
Copied at the time by Finlay to distribute to friends and press as a source of information. VG although some rippling of the paper.

Wim Meulenkamp

ORIGINAL XEROX PUBLIC STATEMENT (CONTINUED) BY THE SAINT-JUST VIGILANTES c. MAY 1988

Little Sparta: Finlay, n.d. (c. May 1988)
An original vintage xerox 30 x 21cm, 1pp statement from Finlay in the guise of the Saint-Just Vigilantes pointing out that Strathclyde Regiona had placed arrestment orders of £10,920 against an alleged rate debt of £4,370 and that the Region had already seized £2,800 against the same debt in February 1988. Finlay also points out that the Region had taken works of art by force five years earlier against the debt, works which they still retained.
Finlay explains that the disputed building is entered in the valuation roll as a "garden temple".
"In law the Region is obliged to accept this description but has persisted in using the phrase 'commercial art gallery'. Unable to grasp the nature of a building they have never visited, they also demand the right to interpret the law within the confines of their own understanding."
Finlay points out in the statement that the Region has refused any rates appeal hearing and by their recent arrestment orders has renewed its attack on Little Sparta exactly when the Glasgow Garden Festival is about to take place.
In protest at these actions Finlay announces that "we have withdrawn from all public projects in Scotland including the Glasgow Garden Festival, the Robert Louis Stevenson Memorial and projects in progress for the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art" and calls on others to withdraw from the Garden Festival.
JOINT (stapled to the statement):
Two xerox sheets (both 30 x 21cm, 1pp) with a text and an image of Finlay's 'APHRODITE OF THE TERROR' - the text by Stephen Bann explaiins the work and it's classical origins. Finlay in his statement says the Region's actions are an "apt commentary" on the work.

ORIGINAL XEROX PUBLIC STATEMENT, APPEAL BY THE SAINT-JUST VIGILANTES c. MAY 1988

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.

NOTE BY FINLAY ABOUT CATS ON (BLUE) RASPBERRY REPUBLIC LETTERHEAD. NO DATE.

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.

ORIGINAL XEROX COPY OF LETTER TO INEZ HORST-ALETRINO & ORIGINAL XEROX TRANSCRIPT OF THE RADIO PROGRAMME IN WHICH CATHERINE MILLET LIBELLED FINLAY AS ANTI-SEMITE. 1988.

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.

Catherine Duhamel, Catherine Miller, Michel Blum

ORIGINAL XEROX COPY OF LETTER TO INEZ HORST-ALETRINO FROM SUE FINLAY. MAY 1988.

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.

Inez Horst-Aletrino

VINTAGE XEROX OFFPRINT OF MAATSTAF NR 3 1988. WITH ARTICLE BY WIM MEULENKAMP. 1988.

N.p.: n.p., 1988
23.5 x 21cm, 18pp (recto only). A xerox copy of the Meulenkamp article as a contribution to the Maatstaf magazine. The article is packed with mistakes and lies - it claims that Little Sparta is full of works with Nazi symbolism (there are indeed some but the inference here is that Finlay is a Nazi which is stupid. He also notes he is writing the article in a spirit of "revenge" - Finlay had complained about a book written by Meulenkamp which claimed Little Sparta was a "folly" which again it clearly is not. The polemic claims Finlay's wife came up with many of his ideas and also calls Finlay's work "shallow" which is just about the last thing most critics would claim of these multilayered works. Amazingly Meulenkamp actually publishes names and addresses of people who wrote to him criticising him. It is a nasty bit of work by someone who clearly has the intelligence to know better but has given in to his baser nature.
One can only imagine Finlay's reaction when this article was sent to him.

Wim Meulenkamp

HANDWRITTEN NOTE ABOUT COLLABORATING WITH FINLAY BY PETER DAY. 27TH JULY 1989.

Ontario: Peter Day, 27 July 1989
10.5 x 15cm, 2pp card with printed logo and a hand-written note from Peter Day mentioning that he has included a set of 8 stickers and 2 texts works which he collaborated with Finlay on. "They were streetworks put up in appropriate locales on Bastille Day. They also serve as a vanguard of the Finlay show I'm doing that opens September 16th, 1989 in Toronto. More street works for that & an extensive publication documenting the "French Affair:. How are you & Andy Goldsworthy? Urgently await his material."
JOINT:
Unaddressed printed envelope with a design by Day.

CIRCULAR LETTER FROM FINLAY. 20TH JUNE 1993.

Little Sparta: Finlay, 20th July 1993
An original vintage xerox 30 x 21cm, 2pp with a round robin letter from Finlay.
The letter explains that the legal action taken by Strathclyde region over the supposed debt relating to the Garden temple will, if successful, mean the end of the garden as an "expression of Revolutionary Neoclassicism; it will be defined as a tourist attraction and commercial enterprise, and its only resort will be to close". Noting that the Scottish Arts Council had effectively remained silent on the matter and that he Finlay had been unwell and "unable to take action as he did in 1983 and at other times when the garden was threatened. Supporters are asked to ask the SAC to take action in support of Finlay "now".

LETTER FROM FINLAY TO THE SAINT-JUST VIGILANTES. 24TH SEPTEMBER 1993.

Little Sparta: Finlay, 24th September 1993
An original vintage xerox 30 x 21cm, 1pp with a round robin letter from Finlay to all of the Saint-Just Vigilantes.
The letter thanks all those who wrote to the Scottish Arts Council to support Finlay in his battle against the Strathclyde region. However Finlay informs his supporter that the SAC have decided not to make any further statements on the matter other than their replies to those letters. SAC had suggested that Little Spartas legally become a Trust but Finlay points out that is not possible given the region's extant legal actions. He also indicates that any impression that the SAC was helping the financial upkeep of the garden was not true - they had offered a "very small sum of money" with conditions attached which made it impossible to accept.

VINTAGE XEROX COPY OF A PRESS CUTTING FROM SCOTSMAN 29 APRIL 1988.

21 x 20cm, 1pp xerox copy of two letters to the Scotsman with the headline " SAINT-JUST'S SCOTTISH CONNECTION" . the first letter from Hamish Henderson after noting a document that directly links Saint-Just to Scottish affairs of the 1790s but goes on to scoff at the idea that Finlay is a Nazi. The other letter is from Alexander Stoddart on behalf of the Saint-Just Vigilantes again in support of Finlay. This was a xerox copied by Finlay and distributed to friends and supporters in his regular mail-outs as was his habit.

Alexander Stoddart, Hamish Henderson