"I have often said that just as the French revolution, for instance, understood itself through antiquity, I think our time can be understood through the French revolution. It is quite a natural process to use other times to understand your own time." -- Ian Hamilton Finlay
Ian Hamilton Finlay, CBE, (28 October 1925 - 27 March 2006) was a Scottish poet, writer, artist and gardener.
"As a friendly one. I would still like to write concrete poems, but I can only do it sometimes.""But at the beginning it was clear to me that concrete poetry was peculiarly suited for using in public settings. This was my idea, but of course I never really much got the chance to do it.""But I can only write what the muse allows me to write. I cannot choose, I can only do what I am given, and I feel pleased when I feel close to concrete poetry - still.""But you have to understand that I consider myself a very modest artist, or whatever, and not of importance really at all - it is quite embarrassing to me to be asked my opinion about things. I am only a wee Scottish poet on the outside of everything.""For me concrete poetry was a particular way of using language which came out of a particular feeling, and I don't have control over whether this feeling is in me or not.""However, I don't feel the world is looking over my shoulder when I am working - I never think about this at all. What I think about is trying to make my work pure, and if it is pure then it can be accessible. It is quite straight forward really.""I am always a beginner. I only try to include different parts of life; the pastoral, the tragic, et cetera.""I am not a modern man, I am just a wee old fashioned one.""I came to these mediums through having the garden, and of course, people who have designed gardens have always worked in collaboration, and never made their own inscriptions.""If the work is pure then you have to think it could be understood. If it is not understood it doesn't mean that your work is not accessible. It doesn't worry me, but, of course, I would be pleased if people liked my work.""Little Sparta is a garden in the traditional sense. It is perhaps not like other modern gardens, but I think that other times would have had no difficulty with it.""My position is that since the non-secular status of my garden is not recognised by the law; by the world of the public, then the garden can only be private. So, I closed the garden to the public.""No, I don't make my work in order to challenge or confuse other people's expectations - I only do what I find natural.""People have always found me challenging - I don't know why, when I am only being myself. I don't understand why they find me so annoying but they do. It is pity, but that is how it is.""The same sort of thing happened in my dispute with the National Trust book: Follies: A National Trust Guide, which implied that the only pleasure you can get from Folly architecture is by calling the architect mad, and by laughing at the architecture.""Well, probably I was fed up with concrete poetry. There was a lot of bad concrete poetry and besides, it was confused with visual poetry which was completely different.""What you compose with is neither here nor there, you compose with words, or you compose with stone plants and trees, or you compose with events; the Sheriff's officer, or whatever."
Finlay was born in Nassau, Bahamas of Scottish parents. He was educated in Scotland at Dollar Academy. At the age of 13, with the outbreak of World War II, he was evacuated to family in the countryside. In 1942 he joined the British Army.
At the end of the war, Finlay worked as a shepherd, before beginning to write short stories and poems, while living on the island of Rousay, Orkney. He published books including The Sea Bed and Other Stories (1958) and The Dancers Inherit the Party (1960) (which was included in its entirety in a New Directions annual a few years later), and some of his work was broadcast by the BBC.
In 1963, Finlay published Rapel, his first collection of concrete poetry (poetry in which the layout and typography of the words contributes to its overall effect), and it was as a concrete poet that he first gained wide renown. Much of this work was issued through his own Wild Hawthorn Press. Eventually he began to compose poems to be inscribed into stone, incorporating these sculptures into the natural environment.
This kind of 'poem-object' features in the garden Little Sparta that he and Sue Finlay created together in the Pentland Hills near Edinburgh. The five-acre garden also includes more conventional sculptures and two garden temples.
In December 2004 in a poll conducted by Scotland on Sunday, a panel of fifty artists, gallery directors and arts professionals voted Little Sparta to be the most important work of Scottish art. Second and third were the Glasgow School of Art by Charles Rennie Mackintosh and The Skating Minister. Sir Roy Strong has said of Little Sparta that it is "the only really original garden made in this country since 1945".
The Little Sparta Trust plans to preserve Little Sparta for the nation by raising enough to pay for an ongoing maintenance fund. Ian Appleton, Stephen Bann, Stephen Blackmore, Patrick Eyres, Richard Ingleby, Ian Kennedy, Magnus Linklater, John Leighton, Duncan Macmillan, Victoria Miro, Paul Nesbitt, Jessie Sheeler and Ann Uppington are trustees.
His work is notable for a number of recurring themes: a penchant for classical writers (especially Virgil); a concern with fishing and the sea; an interest in the French Revolution; and a continual revisiting of World War II. His work can be austere, but it is also at times witty, or even darkly whimsical. His use of Nazi imagery led an accusation of neo-Nazi sympathies, and to a court case, which Finlay won. He also came into conflict Strathclyde Regional Council over his liability for rates on a byre in his garden, which the council insisted was being used as commercial premises. Finlay insisted that it was a garden temple.
One of the few gardens outside Scotland to permanently display his work is the Improvement Garden in Stockwood Discovery Centre, Luton, created in collaboration with Sue Finlay, Gary Hincks and Nicholas Sloan.
Finlay was nominated for the Turner Prize in 1985. He was awarded honorary doctorates from Aberdeen University in 1987, Heriot-Watt University in 1993 and the University of Glasgow in 2001, and an honorary and/or visiting professorship from the University of Dundee in 1999. The French Communist Party presented him with a bust of Saint-Just in 1991. He received the Scottish Horticultural Medal from the Royal Caledonian Horticultural Society in 2002, and the Scottish Arts Council Creative Scotland Award in 2003. Awarded in the Queen's New Year's Honours list in 2002, Finlay was a CBE.
Finlay was married twice and had two children, Alec and Ailie. He died in Edinburgh.
A partial list of Finlay sculptures and gardens. A few photographs are reachable through the external links.
Little Sparta, (with Sue FInlay), Dunsyre, Lanarkshire, Scotland, 1966-
Canterbury sundial, Canterbury, England, University of Kent, near Rutherford College, 1972
UNDA wall, Schiff, Windflower, Stuttgart, Germany, Max Planck Institute, 1975-
anteboreum, Yorkshire, England, private garden
sundial, Liège, Belgium, University of Liège, 1976
sundial, Bonn, Germany, British Embassy, 1979
Five Columns for the Kröller-Müller, second title: A Fifth Column for the Kröller-Müller, third title: Corot — Saint-Just, tree-column bases named LYCURGUS, ROUSSEAU, ROBESPIERRE, MICHELET, COROT, Otterlo, Holland, Rijksmuseum Kröller-Müller, 1982
a basket of lemons, a plough of the Roman sort, two oval plaques, Pistoia, Italy, Villa Celle, 1984
Vienna, Austria, Schweizergarten, 1985
Brittany, France, Domain de Kerguehennec, 1986
Eindhoven, Holland, Van Abbemuseum, 1986
A Remembrance of Annette, with Nicholas Sloan, Münster, Germany, Uberwasser Cemetery, 1987
UNDA, with Sue Finlay and Nicholas Sloan, San Diego, California, USA, Stuart Collection, 1987
Furka Pass, Switzerland, 1987
Strasbourg, France, Musée d'Art Moderne or Musée des Beaux-Arts, 1988
Grove of Silence, Vincennes, with Sue Finlay and Nicholas Sloan, Forest of Dean, England, 1988
Frechen-Bahem, Germany, Haus Bitz, 1988
Preston, England, Harris Museum and Art Gallery, 1989
