15 Jun

Posted at 17:15h in Proposals

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1995
23.2 x 12.5cm, 8pp. A proposal for a public work at the Botanic Gardens, University of Durham where a post of green oak is carved with a combination of numbers that are rearranged in each row (as a "method " used by bellringers) - Finlay notes this references the nearby Cathedral with its bells and the foxglove plants that also have bells. Three watercolour paintings by Ron Costley are reproduced. VG+....

15 Jun

Posted at 17:08h in Proposals

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1993
23.4 x 18cm, 4pp. A proposal for a permanent installation in a new art museum planned for Germany. The work consists of a sentence from Saint-Just in four different languages:

THE NATIVE LAND IS NOT THE LAND IT IS THE COMMUNITY OF FEELINGS

on the ground of a 60 x 60m terrace. VG+. ...

10 Jun

Posted at 18:51h in Artist's Postcards

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, n.d. (1992) 10.2 x 6,.6cm, plain manilla envelope content of three 10 x 6cm, 1pp cards. The cards have texts at the top -

shepherd of stones on the grey card

pastor of oaks on the green card

and "pasteur de chenes" a quote from E. Lochac's Obelisque on the last white card. Lochac was a Jewish Ukrainian poet who lived in France and was persecuted by the Nazis. All VG+ in like envelope. ...

26 May

Posted at 20:03h in CATALOGUE RAISONNES

Koln:: Walther Konig, 1992
25 x 19.5cm, 212pp plus yellow stamped gray paper boards. The first extensive catalogue raisonee of Boltanski's artist's books, mail art, ephemera and editioned works from the period 1966 - 1982. Edited by Jennifer Flay it covers 80 different items and is illustrated in b/w throughout. Text in German, French and English.
This copy is in VG+ condition and is signed by Boltanski on an end page. VG+.

...

21 May

Posted at 15:04h in Artist's Books

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1992
9 x 11.4cm, 8pp plus card wrappers and green printed dust jacket. Two colour photographs by Eva Maria Weinmayer of a tree house which is revealed in the second photograph to be a model and incomplete. The two texts are both from Wittgenstein. The first which shows the seemingly complete treehouse is
"7. What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence."
and the second with the image that reveals the "tree house" to be fake is
"7.01 What we cannot speak about we must construct."
This is reminiscent of Lawrence Weiner's dictum on conceptual art:

1. The artist may construct the piece.
2. The piece may be fabricated.
3. The piece need not be built.
Each being equal and consistent with the intent of the artist, the decision as to condition rests with the receiver upon the occasion of receivership.

But of course Wittgenstein is interested in truth to which his solution was to say the only possible truth to be known is tautological. Finlay seems to be suggesting that an alternative is to create a new truth.
The treehouse was made by "Kroder, Korner and Weinmayr. VG+.

...

15 May

Posted at 17:23h in Proposals

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1992
16.4 x 14.9cm, outer folder content of a concertina 8pp insert printed one side only. A proposal for an "abbreviated doric temple" built on a hillside with four doric pillars but only completing part of a semi-circle. Finlay offers that the structure:

"embodies the original meaning of templum as a space marked out for divination. The stylobate is complete; the part-entabulature and supporting columns delineate "sacred" areas of the sky and, with the autere Latin inscription, frame the "everlasting" - also ephermeral - "temples: of the clouds."

The temple has the phrase "Aetema templa caeli" which translates to "the everlasting temples of the sky" which was cited by Varro in his De Lingua Latina.

There are three drawings by Mark Stewart - plans, sections and side elevations as well as an in situ drawing.
Sadly the printing of the inner pages has been poorly finished and there is sett off between the pages - else VG+. ...

29 Apr

Posted at 09:36h in Miscellany

Docking: Coracle, n.d. (1992)
14.5 x 10.5cm, 8pp plus stiff burgundy printed wrappers. A visual poem written by Simon Cutts in praise (and a little critical en passant) of his friend Ian Hamilton Finlay. Inside the book (which looks like a passport) there are 3 pages - the first is I and has a black rectangle of card pasted to the page, the next page has the H and has empty spaces where similar rectangles might be pasted and the final page F has a black card shaped like a guillotine blade.
Not only referencing Finlay's interest in the French revolution - but also a slight hint at the poet's somewhat irascible nature (which moderated in his old age - by the time I met him he was a pussycat) in the darkness of the shapes and the sharpness of the final "blade". A rather nice little work in homage to the man. VG+.

...

02 Apr

Posted at 18:58h in Artist's Books

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1989
11.6 x 7cm, 20pp plus card wrappers and printed dust jacket. Six drawings by Angela Lemaire are conjoined with Finlay's pithy proverbs.

"The wind is invisible/but we can see which way the trees blow"


This is one of 250 unsigned copies. VG+ but staples are rusty.

...

24 Mar

Posted at 21:32h in OBJECT MULTIPLES

London: Serpentine Gallery, 1992 Three different artist's postcards (10.5 x 15cm, 2pp) each with a pair of images that Boltanski found in copies of the Nazi SIGNAL magazine. He pairs up images of cultural life (a ballet dancer, a model) and nature (a bee) alongside images of soldiers and weapons. This relates to other work where images of victims and murderers are mixed together where no-one can tell which is which. The normalcy of daily life could be found in Nazi Germany as much as less guilty societies (and one should remember Boltanski's jewish heritage).
Take Me (I'm Yours) was the first of a number of such exhibitions which Boltanski had a hand in initiating alongside Hans Ulrich Obrist. Members of the public could take the artworks away. However these cards were only found in the deluxe catalogue for the show.
Each of these cards are signed in pencil by Boltanski on the back.

...

21 Mar

Posted at 18:52h in Artist's Books

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1992
13.5 x 9.2cm, 4pp plus end papers and blue laid paper wrappers. The poem is as follows:

THE HAPPY CATASTROPHE
Be





falls.

and the explanation on the left "The happy catastrophe" - Friedrich Schlegel's characterisation of the French Revolution.
The word befalls is split as if part has dropped off or down but also is a physical reminder of a head falling from a body or the guillotine blade dropping down from above.
Slight former diagonal crease on cover but else VG.

...

11 Mar

Posted at 19:18h in Artist's Postcards

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, n.d. (1995) 23 x 16.1cm, printed envelope content of two cards - one with a text printed black on cream from R.R. Palmer's "Twelve Who Ruled" regarding Saint-Just's way to the guillotine:

Saint-Just stood up in the first cart, head held high, his neck bare, a carnation in his buttonhole, his eyes cooly surveying the crowds that lined the street. The old Saint-Just was restored who said, 'I despise the dust that forms me and speaks to you.'"

The other card is unprinted and blood red.

Both cards have been cut on the diagonal to create guillotine blade shapes.
Finlay's admiration for the purity and lack of compromise of Saint-Just ir reflected in many of his works. This is another. VG+ in like envelope....

01 Mar

Posted at 19:29h in EXHIBITION CATALOGUES

Munich: Galerie Bernd Kluser, 1992
22 x 15.5 x 3cm printed slipcase content of two volumes. Uniformly 22 x 15cm, 92pp and 132pp respectively plus boards and printed dustjacket.
The exhibition catalogue of a group show based on the artists' reaction to the 1926 discovery of the frozen corpse of a leopard at 19,000 feet on Kilimanjaro - a height above where one might not expect such an animal to be found. Hemingway mentions this find in his book "The snows of Kilimanjaro" it being so unusual. The exhibition was based on a number of prints commissioned from each artist by the gallery and issued in two portfolios an edition of 60 copies.
Boltanski's print in portfolio II is a collaged image of a Jewish school from Berlin 1939 - the original photograph overlaid with crumpled transparent paper to slightly mask the image and with packing tape at the corners before being rephotographed. The final print is printed on transparent paper which adds to the feeling of heritage or of coming from a past time - something that mimics some perceptions of the found body of the dead cat.
Other artists found in the two portfolios (volume I and volume II) were Georg Baselitz, Per Kirkeby, Enzo Cucchi, Juliao Sarmento, Mimmo Paladino, Axel Katz, James Brown, Nicholas Africano, A.R. Penck and Donald Baechler; Volume Two features Jannis Kounellis, Maichael Byron, Rebecca Horn, Martin Disler, A.&P. Poirier, Stephan Blankenhol, Jan Fabre, and Tony Cragg as well as Boltanski.
All of the prints are reproduced in colour in the first of the two volumes in this catalogue.
The second volume here displays the various works shown in the group exhibition - Boltanski's was "Les Images Honteuses 'El Caso'" displayed in 3 vitrines and on the wall in a be-curtained image. El Caso includes images of murders and other similar tragedies - the curtain being a sort of removable censorship forcing the viewer to decide whether to look or not.
Short essay text in Enlgish and German by Bernd Kulser. VG+ although a few marks on the slipcase.
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