ALL IDYLLS TURN TO THUNDERSTORMS: Revisiting Ian Hamilton Finlay’s Life and Works

By Brynn Gordon

Scottish Modern artist Ian Hamilton Finlay’s work bears similarities to the National Monument at Carlton Hill. Intended to be a complete reproduction of the Acropolis as it was, the project was left incomplete due to a lack of funds and now resembles that ancient site even more closely, creating a paradoxical contemporary ruin dubbed “Edinburgh’s Disgrace”.  

The accidental commentary the National Monument makes about the folly in fully resurrecting with the distant past and the similarity between the seemingly opposite ideas of Ancient Greece and 19th century Scotland, masonry and concrete, Classical and Modern, serves as a brief introduction to Finlay’s practice. 

Born in 1925 in the Bahamas to Scottish parents, Finlay attended Dollar Academy only to drop out at 13. From 1943-5 he briefly attended the Glasgow School of Art, where he began producing in a range of mediums, from theater to poetry, print, and sculpture. During the Second World War, Finlay served in the Royal Army Service Corps as a non-combatant, travelling to a newly free Germany in 1947. Observing the fallout of the Nazi regime on the country was a deeply impactful experience for him and his art. After the war in the mid-1950s, Finlay took a job as a shepheard on Rousay Island, Orkney. In stark contrast to the violence and political war machines that had dominated life in Europe during the conflict, Finlay’s time on Orkney consisted of woodland rambles, storms, and solitude. During all of this, Finlay found the time to become extremely well versed in European history of the Enlightenment and French Revolution, classical history, and culture. These influences and experiences created a tension between the idyllic rural landscape and grand cycle history that deeply informed his future practice.  

Augusto de Campos, Terremoto, 1956. Ink on Paper, Published in Solt, ed. “Concrete Poetry”, np.

In the 1950s and 1960s, Finlay was predominantly occupied by writing poetry exploring a Scottish pastoral sensibility. This changed when, in 1961, he set up Wild Hawthorn Press, his own publishing and printing workshop that aimed to highlight the work of international poets overlooked by mainstream tastes. It was through his periodical Poor. Old. Tired. Horse. (P.O.T.H) that he came into contact with the work of São Paulo’s Concrete poetry collective Noigandres. The group’s form of concrete poetry, a format where a poem relies on its visual presentation, was revealed to a wider audience with Finlay’s help. Works such as Augusto de Campos’s Terremoto (1956), where the letters within the poem are arranged on a blue background to resemble constellations, not only spurred on the trend of the poetry-art movement internationally but deeply impacted Finlay’s own “poetry prints” like Blue and Brown Poems (1968), where the boundary between words and art was erased, in line with the developing Pop Art style.

Ian Hamilton Finlay, “The Blue and the Brown Poems”, 1968. Series of 12 Lithograph Prints on Paper, 38 x 38 cm. Aspen, Atlantic Richfield Company.

Finlay’s career changed again in the 1960s, as his sudden development of intense agoraphobia caused him to scale back publishing and pursue other projects. Continuing to chase the link between text and image, Finlay undertook the project to develop Stonypath Farm outside of Edinburgh into an “interactive poetic landscape.” Stonypath, renamed Little Sparta, was carefully curated to house new lakes, monumental statues, forests, and fragments of poetry-objects, and likely offered Finlay a simultaneous change to escape from and meditate on themes of war, culture, and 20th century life. Some works, like Appolo and Daphne (1985), brightly painted steel silhouettes of Greek myths, allow viewers to stumble into Finlay’s inner world, hidden in the landscape as if it were a timeless place where such things could exist. Works like The Present Order (1983) speak to the turbulent century he lived through, displaying French revolutionary St. Just’s quote “The present order is the disorder of the future" on broken tiles, as if the disorder of the future can already be seen in the present.

 Ian Hamilton Finlay, The Present Order, 1983. Purbeck and Whitsun Stone, Little Sparta.

The artist’s son Alec Finlay said of the project “it was saying that any place could be like this. Anyone with a little garden can think of it and experience it like a work of art. Art itself doesn’t need to be just what we see in galleries; it can be in a landscape.” Little Sparta allows visitors to read a poem inspired by the very landscape they stand in, letting the dialogue between the words and their surroundings continue the poem in the reader’s mind. Finlay intended for the landscape itself becomes to the poem and artwork, a useful monument to have as he withdrew much of his earlier work from the Scottish Arts Council in 1978 in protest of a “morally and intellectually bankrupt” world (as seen in Death to the Arts Council (1982)).

Ian Hamilton Finlay, Death to the Arts Council (From posters of the little spartan war), 1982. Linocut on paper, 30.5 x 43.2 mm, the Tate.

During the 1980s, Finlay exhibited across Europe and was shortlisted for the Turner Prize. A few notable works from this period are currently displayed in the Tate Modern, exploring the theme of the British relationship with the sea, a constant fascination for Finlay throughout his career. Plaint of the Barge Sails (1975-6) blens maritime imagery with the nursery rhyme “Oranges and Lemons”, almost suggesting that the sailboats sing to one another to evoke a child’s naïve love for the ocean. This is contrasted to his wall-text work All Idylls End in Thunderstorms (1982), consisting of just the title in block letters with no superfluous detail. It reveals with a sense of finality the ephemeral nature of calm and the inevitability of chaos, both in history and in nature.

Ian Hamilton Finlay, Idylls End In Thunderstorms, 1983. Wall Text, Dimensions Variable, National Galley of Scotland and Tate Artist Rooms.

Ian Hamilton Finlay’s life and work are disarming. His constant exploration of the limits of the written word to be graphic design, sculpture, and landscape, and his life-long struggle to reconcile the Classical values of the past with the uncertainty and disarray of modern life, birthed a visual language caught between different eras. Like the National Monument, his output is alternatively witty and grave, in true Scottish fashion. Regardless of whether Finlay’s work covered the French Revolution, gardens, or warships, as his friend Stephen Scobie said, “all the time [he was] at the cutting edge.”

Little Sparta is an hour from Edinburgh and can be accessed by car. More information can be accessed via the link below. Additionally, Finlay’s work is currently free to view at the Tate Modern’s Artist Rooms as part of an ongoing exhibition.

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Bibliography

Carlson, Prudence . n.d. “Little Sparta Ian Hamilton Finlay.” Www.ianhamiltonfinlay.com. Accessed February 25, 2024. http://www.ianhamiltonfinlay.com/ian_hamilton_finlay.html#3.

Clüver, Claus . n.d. “The Noigandres Poets and Concrete Art.” Www.lehman.cuny.edu. Indiana University. Accessed February 25, 2024. https://www.lehman.cuny.edu/ciberletras/v17/cluver.htm.

“Great Works: The Present Order (1983, Ian Hamilton Finlay.” 2009. The Independent. May 28, 2009. https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/great-works/great-works-the-present-order-1983-ian-hamilton-finlay-1692373.html.

McNay, Michelle . 2006. “Obituary: Ian Hamilton Finlay.” The Guardian. March 29, 2006. https://www.theguardian.com/news/2006/mar/29/guardianobituaries.artsobituaries.

retreats, Certain gardens are described as, and When They Are Really Attacks.«. n.d. “Ian Hamilton Finlay & His Work.” Little Sparta. Accessed February 25, 2024. https://www.littlesparta.org.uk/ian-hamilton-finlay-his-work/.

Scobie, Stephen. n.d. “The Dancers Inherit the Party by Ian Hamilton Finlay.” Scottish Poetry Library. Accessed February 25, 2024. https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/dancers-inherit-party/.

Smith, Duncan J.D. 2020. “The Athens of the North: Edinburgh’s Own Acropolis.” Timeless Travels. July 31, 2020. https://www.timeless-travels.co.uk/post/the-athens-of-the-north-edinburgh-s-own-acropolis.

Tate. 2012. “Ian Hamilton Finlay – Little Sparta | TateShots.” YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fn2c1g0m1bU.

“ARTIST ROOMS: Ian Hamilton Finlay – Display at Tate Modern.” Tate. Accessed February 25, 2024. https://www.tate.org.uk/visit/tate-modern/display/artist-rooms-ian-hamilton-finlay.