Ian Hamilton Finlay, 1925–2006: Sculpture As a Fusion of Poetry And

08-pointingsmerged.qxd 17/4/07 8:12 AM Page 102 Ian Hamilton Finlay, words and plant-ings to create a unique 1925–2006: sculpture as a type of environmental sculpture. Yet, as the word was always his starting point, fusion of poetry and place Finlay preferred to be described as a poet. It was the diverse contexts of display Patrick Eyres that always determined the scale and medium, whether an artwork was destined On Monday 27 March 2006, Ian Hamilton for a building, garden, park or landscape, Finlay died at the age of eighty. We lament or exhibition and publication. Similarly, it the passing of a Renaissance man: poet, was through the challenge of realizing his sculptor, artist, philosopher, landscape ideas with exquisite quality in the right gardener. This range of activity acknowl- materials that he initiated the practice of edges the interdisciplinary thinking that collaborating with artists, craftsmen and infused his creative process. However, in architects. Consequently his prolific out- view of his extraordinary achievement, it put encompassed prints, textiles, books, is a surprise to recollect that he was not sculpture and installations for a variety of trained in any of these disciplines. He did interior and outdoor sites.1 not attend university or complete any Whether engaged with the modernism course at art school. Instead he was self- of concrete poetry in the 1960s and 70s, or taught and won international recognition a neoclassical postmodernism, Finlay con- as a leading exponent of the modernist sistently upheld the traditional function genre of concrete poetry. Indeed it was of art as a repository and transmitter of through the visual dynamic of concrete meaning. Thus the interdisciplinary thrust poetry that he evolved a way of fusing of his oeuvre was not only programmatic Pointings 102 | Sculpture Journal 16.1 [2007] 08-pointingsmerged.qxd 17/4/07 8:12 AM Page 103 1. Gary Hincks, Little Sparta but also polemical in its sustained critique scale to reflect upon contemporary ideas, Overview, 2002, pen and ink, of certain twentieth-century conventions.2 to salute cultural heroes and to invoke 260 * 510 mm, Collection Gary Hincks Among Finlay’s concerns were the separa- the European tradition of the classical tion of poetry and the visual arts, the mod- garden. ernist disjuncture between avant-garde Little Sparta stands in hill-farming and tradition, the privileging of object- country, over 300 metres above sea-level, based sculpture, and the phenomenon of where the continuous struggles of garden- the sculpture park. Nonetheless, his contin- ing are compounded by the seasonal uing neoclassicism forged a reconciliation onslaughts of the weather. Nonetheless between modernist and postmodernist this former upland croft has been trans- practices in his work, in the way it formed into an embowered haven, whose embraced a minimalism which synthesizes numerous glades and pools have been concrete poetics and the elegant simplicity designed as settings for inscribed sculp- of the classical inscription. ture. Begun in 1967, the garden had been a Far from being historicist, Finlay’s neo- conceptual entity since 1964. Finlay had classicism is not only affiliated to the become an established figure in Scottish recent discourse of non-object-based sculp- avant-garde literary circles by 1961. In 1963 ture, but also addresses contemporary cul- he published his first collection of concrete ture through contemplating issues as poems and the following year began to apparently disparate as Terror and the envisage concrete poetry that was integral Divine. It was through his interest in the to gardens. From 1964 to 1966 he started to garden as a site for artworks that he began implement these ideas through the printed to embrace practices that are recognizably poem-gardens and the garden poem- sculptural. As a result Finlay’s principal sculptures around his former homes at legacy resides in the four-acre, neoclassical Ardgay in the Highlands and Coaltown of garden developed over the past forty Callange, near St Andrew’s in Fife, before years around his home at Little Sparta moving to the hill farm of Stonypath. on the edge of the Pentland Hills in The garden was created gradually southern Scotland. This is the place that through the twenty-three-year collabora- became the epicentre of his cultural tion with Sue Finlay. It had been Sue’s par- production. As a landmark work of art – ents, Simon and Caitriona Macdonald innovative, organic, unique – it is an awe- Lockhart, who had given them Stonypath inspiring experience. Yet it is a private as a gift. The plantings are crucial. Hardy realm that has been created on a domestic trees and shrubs form the skeleton of the 103 | Sculpture Journal 16.1 [2007] 08-pointingsmerged.qxd 17/4/07 8:12 AM Page 104 garden, provide shelter from the elements the absence of birch trees, the meaning is and are integral to the composition of self-explanatory. In addition, the associa- Finlay’s sculpture. However it was the pro- tions of the words complement the idea of gramme of neo-classicizing, which began each work by drawing attention to the during the 1970s, that led to the re-naming sights, scents and sounds which amplify of Stonypath as Little Sparta in about 1980, enjoyment of the sensuousness of ‘place’. and that has shaped the place as it is today.3 Animated by weather, the garden becomes Only vestiges remain of the concrete poet- an Aeolian harp, whose cadence is played ics at Stonypath between 1967 and 1975, by wind soughing through trees and and so we must consult other sources of shrubs. Simultaneously the rustle of a documentation. Even though these are breeze delights the eye with the dance of plentiful,4 it is preferable to visit Stuttgart sun dapple and leaf shadow. for his self-contained garden at the Max Although it was never realized, The Planck Institute (1975).5 Monteviot Proposal has proved to be As Finlay familiarized himself with the Finlay’s most extensive statement about history of garden design he became aware the theory and practice of his sculpture, that the traditional concept of the garden- and he would reiterate that it continued to as-artwork necessitated a poetic, philo- be a valued touchstone. Clearly there is an sophical and political synergy. He also affinity between this approach and the came to understand that the terse economy post-conceptual, non-object-based sculp- of text favoured by concrete poetry was tural discourse. Furthermore, he was criti- evident in the classical use of inscriptions. cal of the self-contained autonomy that Thus he began to appreciate the resonances allowed modernist sculpture to be placed invoked by association-endowed inscrip- in a variety of environments regardless of tions, and the possibility of transforming a site specificity. To his way of thinking site through the poetics of metaphor, the word was the catalyst that generated whether a landscape or a gallery. Finlay’s associations which embraced the other use of the inscription resists focusing elements of each composition, such as exclusively on the sculptural object. the trees and the place, even the weather. Instead, the object is only one element Consequently the extensive repertoire of within a work composed of plantings, objects considered worthy of inscription ground and relation to the overall site. encompassed the tree-plaque, bench, He was emphatic about the key role of obelisk, planter, bridge and tree-column composition: ‘The art of gardening is like base, as well as the headstone – and the the art of writing, of painting, of sculpture; roll-call of craft-collaborators amounts to a it is the art of composing and making a gazetteer of contemporary British stone- harmony, with disparate elements’.6 carving and letter-cutting. Through his summary of the neo- While thoroughly modern, Finlay classical re-arming at Little Sparta during enjoyed a passionate sense of history and the late 1970s, The Monteviot Proposal took delight in the tradition of the garden (1979) invites us to appreciate the ‘dis- as an antidote to the surrounding culture – parate elements’ of Finlay’s sculpture: ‘The as a site of poetic, philosophical and politi- sculpture – if one is to call it a sculpture – cal discourse – and associated his art with was characteristic of the ornaments of the lyric garden-making of the Georgian that landscape, for it drew attention not poet William Shenstone at The Leasowes, to itself (though it was pleasing to look at) and with the pugnaciousness of Lord but to the indigenous features of the Cobham’s Stowe. Finlay’s works are a woodland – to the pleasure of hearing the pleasure to experience and, while always breeze in the trees, and to the trees which challenging, they have often provoked were both ornamental and useful’.7 A splen- controversy due to his startling use of did example of Finlay’s approach is the shock tactics, which generally combine headstone carved to resemble a temple surprise and an impish sense of humour. façade. It bears the inscription, ‘Bring Back Aircraft carriers become bird tables and The Birch’. We gasp at this exhortation to feathery ‘aeroplanes’ swoop down to re- restore corporal punishment – before fuel. Through the movement of shadow, noticing that it is placed amidst a grove of sundials were celebrated as examples of hornbeams and maples and that, through avant-garde Kinetic Art. Hand grenades Pointings 104 | Sculpture Journal 16.1 [2007] 08-pointingsmerged.qxd 17/4/07 8:12 AM Page 105 2. Chris Broughton, Stockwood Park Overview, 1992, pen and ink, 420 * 297 mm, New Arcadian Journal, no 33/34 (1992) replace traditional pineapple finials atop land Europe appreciated Finlay’s sculptural the entrance to a garden walk.

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