Ian Hamilton Finlay: A Visual Primer Hardcover - 1992

From the publisher

Poet, gardener, and moralist, Ian Hamilton Finlay is also an artist ofinternational stature whose remarkable originality blurs the traditional genredistinctions between painting, sculpture, and architecture. Ian Hamilton Finlay: AVisual Primer will be an indispensable source for readers interested in any aspectof his work. Representing Finlay as both a visual artist and a poet, it bringstogether the widest range of printed texts, photographs, and environmental work yetassembled to provide a comprehensive overview of his achievements.Finlay becameknown in the 1960s as Britain's foremost concrete poet and promoted this movementthrough his Wild Hawthorn Press, which he continues to operate. Yet he is best knownfor his garden at Stonypath in Lanarkshire, Scotland, one of the most celebrated ofmodern gardens. "Little Sparta," as the garden is now called, is an inland islandconstantly transformed with Neoclassical specimens relating Finlay's poem structuresto a variety of landscape expressions. It uses the simple elements of plants, water, and land forms in which poem structures and emblems are points of focus to provide avisual and aesthetic education for the visitor.In this garden laboratory, Finlay hastransformed the poem from something on a printed page to something akin to a work ofarchitecture. The majority of his work (which extends to many media including cards, posters, pamphlets, portfolios, books, and photographs) is carried out incollaboration with craftspeople, artists, photographers, and architects. Like hisgarden, his works often imply a sharp, uncompromising critique of the contemporarycultural scene.The French critic Yves Abrioux is a member of the editorial board ofthe magazine Digraphs and has published numerous articles and exhibition catalogs onIan Hamilton Finlay's work, as well as on contemporary American fiction and literarytheory. Stephen Bann is Professor of Modern Cultural Studies at the University ofKent.