Ian Hamilton Finlay: A Visual Primer

The MIT Press, 1992 4to (28.5 cm), X, 318 pp. Publisher's cloth. "Poet, gardener, and moralist, Ian Hamilton Finlay is also an artist of international stature whose remarkable originality blurs the traditional genre distinctions between painting, sculpture, and architecture. Ian Hamilton Finlay: A Visual Primer will be an indispensable source for readers interested in any aspect of his work. Representing Finlay as both a visual artist and a poet, it brings together the widest range of printed texts, photographs, and environmental work yet assembled to provide a comprehensive overview of his achievements. Finlay became known in the 1960s as Britain's foremost concrete poet and promoted this movement through his Wild Hawthorn Press, which he continues to operate. Yet he is best known for his garden at Stonypath in Lanarkshire, Scotland, one of the most celebrated of modern gardens. "Little Sparta," as the garden is now called, is an inland island constantly transformed with Neoclassical specimens relating Finlay's poem structures to 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 a visual and aesthetic education for the visitor." (from the publisher's description)