NATIONAL LIFE STORIES ARTISTS’ LIVES Ian Hamilton Finlay Interviewed by Cathy Courtney C466/014 IN PARTNERSHIP WITH IMPORTANT Every effort is made to ensure the accuracy of this transcript, however no transcript is an exact translation of the spoken word, and this document is intended to be a guide to the original recording, not replace it. Should you find any errors please inform the Oral History curators. This transcript is copyright of the British Library. Please refer to the oral history section at the British Library prior to any publication or broadcast from this document. Oral History British Library Sound Archive 96 Euston Road NW1 2DB 020 7412 7404 THE NATIONAL LIFE STORY COLLECTION INTERVIEW SUMMARY SHEET Ref. No.: C466/14 Playback No.: F3724-F3731 Collection title: Artists’ Lives Interviewee’s surname: Hamilton Finlay Title: Mr Interviewee’s forenames: Ian Sex: Male Occupation: Date of birth: Mother’s occupation: Father’s occupation: Date(s) of recording: 06.11.1993; 07.11.1993; 16.09.1997; 17.09.1997 Location of interview: Stonypath Name of interviewer: Cathy Courtney Type of recorder: Marantz CP430 Total no. of tapes: 8 Type of tape: Mono or stereo: Stereo Speed: N/A Noise reduction: Dolby B Original or copy: Original Additional material: Copyright/Clearance: The following sections are closed for 50 years until July 2066: Track 13 [0:10:47 until 0:29:47] and Track 14 [0:00:00 until 0:13:09] © The British Library Interviewer’s comments: Ian Hamilton Finlay C466/14 Track 1: Tape 1: Side A Page 1 Track 1: Tape 1: Side A Interview with Ian Hamilton Finlay on the 6th of November 1993. Have you done any work this morning? Yes, I have. [break in recording] One of the things I thought we ought to start off by saying is that, to talk about the fact that you are suspicious of autobiography, let alone biography. Yes, and for some time, you know, you’re often asked when you...exhibitions, or take part in exhibitions, to compose little, they call them biographies but they’re autobiographies, and I usually put at the beginning, ‘Born in Nassau, Bahamas, or in Rousay, Orkney,’ because it instantly establishes that nothing in this world’s very very certain, and also something else, that, I was in fact born in Nassau, but this seems quite inappropriate, and fictional, and if you wanted...I mean if you wanted to get an idea of me from reading the thing, it would be much better to believe that I was born in Orkney than in the Bahamas. Because that’s nearer to where your blood is? No, just as a person. I mean I really am nothing to do with the Bahamas. I mean, everybody is very surprised if I say I was born in the Bahamas, whereas nobody would really be surprised if I said I was born in Orkney, except the ones who know I was born in the Bahamas! But anyway, this thing about putting, I was born in this place or that place, it’s really never been queried by anywhere, like...nobody has said, ‘But surely you know where you were born.’ which I would have thought would have been the automatic response, but not so. So I as far as possible go on doing it, except very special occasions where I feel I need to be very very serious, or whatever. But the point is a quite serious one, that you could recount your life as a series of facts, but it’s very possible that these facts would not really give a clear picture of you at all, because in the first place large parts of your life are imposed on you by chance or necessity, and only small parts of your life strike you, oneself, as being, in the phrase of this time, authentic; perhaps only moments are authentic. So that any time that I have had to, as it were, retell the events of my life, I’ve always felt awful afterwards, but I’ve also felt that this doesn't give a true picture of myself at all. And any true, in quotes, ‘picture of yourself’ would really have to be entirely fictional, it would have Ian Hamilton Finlay C466/14 Track 1: Tape 1: Side A Page 2 to be created to make a certain impression or whatever, which the real facts of one’s life wouldn’t do, I think. And, of course when people write about your work, or your life, no, your work really, that’s fictional too, because they don’t really take account of the actual problems which you face. I mean they treat your work as a kind of logical development, whereas what you do or don’t do is also dependent on having or not having money, the difficulties of one’s circumstance, and so on and so on. I mean for instance at this moment I really can’t start new works because I haven’t any money. I mean I never have money, but I usually, or often, have some overdraft leeway, and that’s what I sort of work on, but at the moment I’m at the end of it so I can’t really do anything. And nobody’s going to, you know, in their next review of my work, going to say, ‘During this period he didn’t do anything because he hadn’t any money.’ I mean if they notice at all that I didn’t start anything, they would ascribe it to some quite other sort of reason, tiredness or whatever, whatever, or whatever. So, I mean the things that really, well not entirely but to a large extent, govern what you do, are often quite extraneous things, and when I read articles about my work, even if I like them, I feel that they really are fictional, or are to be taken...a sort of pile of constructions or something like that, not certainly as really to do with me. And then of course, because people like to simplify everything and categorise everything, there are certain myths grow up and are repeated again and again. I mean, because it’s known that I collaborate with craftsmen, it’s often said that I just have ideas, and that other people carry them out, and the sort of suggestion is that I just have like an idea, a little thought or whatever and I pass it over to somebody. But this is really not the case. And the same with the garden, that people often say that I had the kind of idea for the garden but other people have made the garden, but in fact I made the garden with my hands, you know. And as regards working with the craftsmen, I give very detailed...I mean I...when I...I usually work by letter, and I would set out the idea of the work, a clear description of the work, and the idea of the work, but I would always go on and say that this will be interpreted in material terms in such and such a way, and I set out very definitely how it should be done, allowing them to demur if they wish and say no, it will be better to do it that way. But I would feel it quite unfair to expect somebody, a craftsman, to work from the words and not from a very clear description of the material means involved. But, as I say, people always want to simplify, and because it’s known that I think or whatever, it’s assumed that the thing would be in two parts, but I myself translate the thought into its material terms. And of course if I’m working with people who I’m used to, I know how they work, so that that thought would probably be at the beginning of the work, that I would devise the work specifically for a particular person for their possibilities and for their limitations as well. And I suppose since I don’t have ideal collaborators, in a Ian Hamilton Finlay C466/14 Track 1: Tape 1: Side A Page 3 sense my ideal works don’t exist, something like that. I mean, that if I had other collaborators I could do very different things I would think. OK, you ask a question now. Do you expect to be understood? Well, in one sense I expect to be misunderstood, but I think that the question has to be sort of translated or re-paraphrased and that is that, I don’t work with any particular audience in mind, but I certainly don’t work for my own gratification, and what I work for I suppose is some implicit rather than explicit idea of what a reasonably intelligent, perceptive person could be expected to understand; but not just a person of this moment, but over a certain length of time. I would deplore work which was personally esoteric – well I wouldn’t deplore it, I just wouldn’t be interested in it. But of course I realise that all times have limitations, and almost all times regard themselves as being immune from limitations. And I know that certain things that I do won’t be understood, or will be misconstrued, or whatever, but I don’t work in terms of the taboos, or whatever, of the instant, of a particular moment. But I was thinking, even before somebody responds to your work, just when you were talking about collaborating with somebody, I mean communication seems to me incredibly difficult.