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A people's Arcadia: the public gardens of Ian Hamilton Finlay in relation to Little Sparta

2009; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 29; Issue: 1-2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/14601170701807088

1943-2186

Patrick Eyres,

Landscape and Cultural Studies

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1. The hill farm of Stonypath had been the gift of Sue Finlay's parents, Simon and Caitriona Macdonald Lockhart. Although Ian and Sue Finlay moved into Stonypath in the autumn of 1966, it was the spring of 1967 that saw the initial work in the garden. However, the garden had been a conceptual entity since 1964 when Finlay had begun to envisage concrete poetry that was integral to gardens. See Patrick Eyres (ed.), New Arcadian Journal, 61/62, 2007; Ian Hamilton Finlay: Selected Landscapes. 2. Erwin Panofsky, ‘Et in Arcadia ego: on the Conception of Transcience in Poussin and Watteau’ (1935), in: R. Klibansky and H. J. Paton (eds), Philosophy and History: Essays Presented to Ernst Cassiser (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1938), pp. 223–254. For Finlay's mediation of Panofsky's Arcadian discourse, see Yves Abrioux, Ian Hamilton Finlay, A Visual Primer (London: Reaktion Books, 2nd edn 1992), pp. 241–247. 3. Stephen Bann has usefully described Finlay's ‘landscape improvements’ as ‘self contained’, see Abrioux (note 2), p. 121. This has proved to be an appropriate term for the public gardens even when they have been inserted into pre‐existing landscapes with sculpture, such as the Kröller‐Müller and Domaine de Kerghuennec sculpture parks. For more detail on the public gardens in relation to Little Sparta, see Patrick Eyres, ‘Ian Hamilton Finlay and the cultural politics of neoclassical gardening’, Garden History, 28/1, 2000, pp. 152–166, and Patrick Eyres, ‘Naturalizing Neoclassicism: Little Sparta and the Public Gardens of Ian Hamilton Finlay’, in: Patrick Eyres and Fiona Russell (eds), Sculpture and the Garden (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), pp. 170–186. See New Arcadian Journal, 61/62, 2007 (note 1). 4. From Panofsky (note 2). 5. See Ian Hamilton Finlay, Proposal for the Serpentine Gallery Garden (Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1998), unpaginated, for the Eight Benches, Tree‐Plaque and the Paved Area. The kernel of the latter incorporates the tribute to Diana, Princess of Wales, the gallery's former patron, which was added after her death in July 1997. 6. For example, in 1983 a column was installed as an eye‐catcher at the far end of the Lakelet and its pedestal bore the inscription (from Saint Just): ‘The World has been Empty since the Romans’ (see illustration in Abrioux [note 2], p. 263). However, it was considered inappropriate and relocated as a tumbled ruin beside the grotto. 7. See Harry Gilonis, ‘Emblematic and expressive: the gardenist modes of William Shenstone and Ian Hamilton Finlay’, New Arcadian Journal, 53/54, 2002, pp. 86–106. 8. For examples of proposals, see the following: Abrioux (note 2), pp. 121–123, 132–139, 147, 296, 316; Pia Simig and Rosemarie Pahlke (eds), Ian Hamilton Finlay: Prints, 1963‐1997 (Ostfildern: Editions Cantz, 1997), pp. 95, 114–115, 141, 148–149, 152–153, 182, 194, 213–215. See also the special edition of Word & Image, 21/4, 2005, ‘From book to garden and back: Ian Hamilton Finlay – four essays and an exhibition catalogue’, especially John Dixon Hunt, ‘Ian Hamilton Finlay and the commonplace – book to garden and back’, pp. 294–307, and John Dixon Hunt, ‘Catalogue’, pp. 357–362. 9. For more detail, see Eyres (note 3), ‘Neoclassical gardening’, pp. 152–166. By 1961, Finlay had become an established figure in Scottish avant‐garde literary circles. In 1963 he published his first collection of concrete poems and the following year began to envisage concrete poetry that was integral to gardens. From 1964 to 1966 he started to implement these ideas through the printed poem‐gardens and the garden poem‐sculptures around his former homes at Ardgay in the Highlands and Coaltown of Callange, near St Andrew's in Fife. 10. Thus his prolific output was able to encompass prints, textiles, books, sculpture and installations for a variety of interior and outdoor sites. Throughout his productive career, it was the diverse contexts of display that always determined the scale and medium, whether an artwork was destined for a building, garden, park, or landscape, or exhibition and publication. For an overview of Finlay's oeuvre, see Abrioux (note 2); for architectural and landscape works, see Pia Simig and Zdenek Felix (eds), Ian Hamilton Finlay: Works in Europe, 1972‐1995 (Ostfildern: Editions Cantz, 1995), unpaginated, with John Dixon Hunt (introduction), Werner Hannappel (photographs) and Harry Gilonis (commentaries); for the prints, see Simig and Pahlke (note 8), Prints, 1963‐1997. 11. For a discussion of the integration and meaning of sculpture within British examples, see Patrick Eyres and Fiona Russell, ‘The Georgian Landscape Garden and the Victorian Urban Park’, in: Eyres and Russell (note 3), Sculpture and the Garden, pp. 38–49. 12. Ian Hamilton Finlay (with Nicholas Sloan), The Monteviot Proposal, 1979. All 18 pages are reproduced in Patrick Eyres (ed.), Mr. Aislabie's Gardens (Leeds: New Arcadian Press, 1981), unpaginated. 13. For the evolution of Little Sparta, see David Paterson, Selected Ponds (Reno, NV: West Coast Poetry Review, 1976), with introductions by Stephen Bann and Bernard Lassus; Stephen Bann, ‘A description of Stonypath’, Journal of Garden History, 1/2, 1981, pp. 113–144, and Jessie Sheeler, Little Sparta: the Garden of Ian Hamilton Finlay (London: Frances Lincoln, 2003), with photographs by Andrew Lawson. 14. Due to health difficulties, Finlay did not create a proposal for St George's, Bristol. However, his intentions are recorded in the summary of the project by Jonathan Stracey, Director of the Music Trust: letter to Ian Hamilton Finlay, 5 February 1999 (Archive: St George's, Bristol). The three pairs of benches that offer rest and reflection are complemented by three other evocative works: the wall‐plaque, medallion and teak post. See Eyres (note 3), New Arcadian Journal, no. 61/62. 15. Finlay (note 12), The Monteviot Proposal. All quotations in this paragraph are from this source; the emphases are Finlay's. 16. For a detailed discussion of this context, see Patrick Eyres and Fiona Russsell, ‘Modernism, Postmodernism, landscape and regeneration’, pp. 111–119, and Eyres, ‘Naturalizing neoclassicism’, in: Eyres and Russell (note 3), Sculpture and the Garden. 17. Finlay (note 12), The Monteviot Proposal. All quotations in this paragraph are from this source; the emphases are Finlay's. 18. Finlay's emphasis, ibid. 19. For the Forest of Dean, see R. Martin, The Sculpted Forest: Sculpture in the Forest of Dean (Bristol: Redcliffe Press, 1990), p. 57. 20. These are Lycurgus, Corot, Robespierre, Michelet and Rousseau, all of whom are represented in the Pantheon at Little Sparta. 21. For the emblematic use of military technologies, see Patrick Eyres, ‘Ian Hamilton Finlay: emblems and iconographies, medals and monuments’, The Medal, 31, 1997, pp. 73–84; and Ian Hamilton Finlay (with Ron Costley), Heroic Emblems (Calais, VT: Z Press, 1977), with introduction and commentaries by Stephen Bann. 22. See, for example, Yves Abrioux, Jonathan Buckley, Patrick Eyres and Ian Hamilton Finlay, ‘Liberty, terror, virtue: the Third Reich revisited and the Little Spartan War’, New Arcadian Journal, 15, 1984, unpaginated. See also, Patrick Eyres, ‘The Third Reich Revisited’, Cencrastus, 10, 1982, pp. 23–27, and Patrick Eyres, ‘Wildflowers of the Ehrentempeln: the Denazification of Neo‐classicism’, in: Alec Finlay (ed.), Wood Notes Wild, Essays on the Poetry and Art of Ian Hamilton Finlay (Edinburgh: Polygon, 1995), pp. 206–214. 23. See, for example, ‘Ian Hamilton Finlay: retrospective’, in Cencrastus, 22, 1986, pp. 20–43, including Patrick Eyres, ‘“Hedgehog Stonypath” and The Little Spartan War’, pp. 35–37, and Stephen Bann, ‘Apollo in Strathclyde’, pp. 39–42. See also Patrick Eyres, ‘Despatches from the Little Spartan War’, New Arcadian Journal, 23, 1986, pp. 3–37. 24. Yves Abrioux has usefully distinguished Finlay's sustained programme of polemic as ‘polemological’. See Yves Abrioux, ‘The heroic mode: the Third Reich revisited and the Little Spartan War’, New Arcadian Journal, 15, 1984, unpaginated, and Abrioux (note 2). 25. Erwin Panofsky, ‘Et in Arcadia ego: Poussin and the Elegiac Tradition’ (1951), in: Meaning in the Visual Arts (New York: Doubleday Anchor, 1955). For Finlay's mediation of Panofsky's arcadian discourse, see Abrioux (note 2), pp. 241–247. For the preceding quotation see Panofsky (note 2). 26. Ian Hamilton Finlay (with Gary Hincks), Footnotes to an Essay, with commentaries by Stephen Bann, in Ian Hamilton Finlay, Serpentine Gallery exhibition catalogue (London: Arts Council, 1977), reproduced in Abrioux (note 2), pp. 245–247. 27. Panofsky (note 25), ‘Et in Arcadia ego’. 28. Ian Hamilton Finlay (with Ron Costley), commentary on the medal: First Battle of Little Sparta, reproduced in Eyres (note 21), p. 79, and Abrioux (note 2), p. 244. For detailed discussions of The Little Spartan War, see Abrioux et al. (note 22); Bann and Eyres (note 23); Eyres, New Arcadian Journal (note 23). 29. From Ian Hamilton Finlay, ‘Unconnected Sentences on Gardening’, c.1980, reproduced in Abrioux (note 2), p. 40. 30. One exception among his permanent public installations is The Arcadian Dream Garden at St Mary Axe in the City of London (2004), which borders the piazza that surrounds ‘The Gherkin’. Unlike the Serpentine Gallery garden, this is an environment marked by work and haste, and by the simultaneity of architectural splendour and alienation. It is also a landscape of wealth generation that is no stranger to wartime bombing and terrorist assault. Here passers‐by are invited to contemplate the incongruous conjunctions of Finlay's Arcady: of tranquillity within work‐a‐day busy‐ness, of the horror of death within an idyllic terrain. See Eyres (note 1), New Arcadian Journal, 61/62, 2007. 31. Ian Hamilton Finlay (with Sue Finlay, Keith Brookwell, Annika Sandell, Thomas Grieve and John R. Nash), A Country Lane with Stiles, Information Board, Glasgow Garden Festival, 1988. This is an edited version of the introductory text in the proposal, Ian Hamilton Finlay (with Laurie Clark), A Country Lane with Stiles (Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1988), unpaginated. All the illustrations are reproduced in Eyres (note 3), ‘Naturalizing neoclassicism’, pp. 178–179. For photographs of Finlay's installation, see Graeme Murray (ed.), Art in the Garden: Installations: Glasgow Garden Festival (Edinburgh: Graeme Murray, 1988), pp. 46–47. 32. Richard Cork, ‘Interview with George Mulvagh’, in Graeme Murray (note 31), pp. 10–15 (p. 14). 33. Yves Abrioux, ‘From Versailles to La Villette’, in Murray (note 31), pp. 17–19. 34. From Ian Hamilton Finlay, ‘More detached sentences on gardening in the manner of Shenstone’, c.1981, reproduced in Abrioux (note 2), p. 40. 35. From Ian Hamilton Finlay, ‘Detached sentences on public space’, in Finlay (with Gary Hincks), Six Proposals for the Improvement of Stockwood Park, Luton (Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1986). For this proposal, see note 40. 36. From Ian Hamilton Finlay, ‘Disconnected sentences on site specific sculpture’, New Arcadian Broadsheet, 46 (Leeds: New Arcadian Press, 1998). 37. Walter Grasskamp, ‘Invasion from the Artist's Studio’, in Murray (note 31), pp. 20–22. 38. George Mulvagh, in Cork, ‘Interview’, in Murray (note 31), pp. 10–15 (p. 14). 39. For Finlay's most substantial private garden, see Pia Simig (ed.), Fleur de l'Air: A Garden in Provence by Ian Hamilton Finlay (Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 2004), with Volkmar Herre (photographs), John Dixon Hunt (introduction), Harry Gilonis (commentaries) and Gary Hincks (overview). See also Harry Gilonis, ‘Where time becomes space: Ian Hamilton Finlay's garden in Provence’, Word & Image (note 8), pp. 308–322. 40. For the Stockwood Park proposal, see Finlay (with Hincks) (note 35), reproduced in full, including Finlay (with Nicholas Sloan), the unrealised seventh proposal for a pool, and commentary by Patrick Eyres, ‘A Peoples' Arcadia’, in New Arcadian Journal, 33/34, 1992, pp. 61–103. The seven proposals are also reproduced in Simig and Pahlke (note 8), pp. 108–109 and 209; the initial six in Word & Image (note 8), pp. 359–362; four of the six in Abrioux (note 2), pp. 136–139. See also Stephen Bann, ‘A Luton Arcadia: Ian Hamilton Finlay's contribution to the English neoclassical tradition’, Journal of Garden History, 33/1–2, 1993, pp. 104–112; and Lucius Burckhardt (trans. Lesley Lendrum), Sculpture in the Park: The Hamilton Finlay Sculpture Garden, Stockwood Park, Luton (Luton: Luton Borough Council, 1991), unpaginated, and Simig and Felix (note 10), Works in Europe, plates 53–59. 41. Tragically, the bronze head of The Herm of Aphrodite was stolen on the night of 26/27 February 2000. Efforts to replace the head have redoubled since Luton Council was awarded grant aid for Stockwood Park by the Heritage Lottery Fund in 2006. By July 2007 Patrick Eyres had identified not only the Hellenistic statue in the British Museum from which the head had been cast, but also various means through which the new head could be made. Rebecca Willem, the curator of Stockwood Park Museum remains optimistic that restoration of The Herm of Aphrodite will be completed during 2008. 42. See Wendy Frith (pp. 31–37), in Frith and Eyres, ‘In the Garden of Venus’, New Arcadian Journal, 33/34, 1992, pp. 31–58. 43. Ian Hamilton Finlay, inscription for the Flock of Stones: ‘FLOCK, n. a number of a kind, an amplitude. The Pythagoreans regarded men as the property of the gods, as a sort of FLOCK, which may not leave its fold without the consent of the gods. – Zeller’. 44. Bob Burgoyne, in conversation with the author (20 April 2007), mentioned that Finlay didn't mind about this, regarding it as the way of the world. Bob Burgoyne had supervised the creation of Finlay's improvement garden at Stockwood Park. 45. Finlay had earlier (1979) deployed the erratum slip (for a single error), with polemic playfulness: ‘Erratum: Arts Council/For “Mind” read “Void”’. For another example of the use of ‘Erratum’, see Simig and Pahlke (note 8), p. 27. 46. For the Little Sparta Trust, see and Patrick Eyres, ‘Planting for Perpetuity’, Historic Gardens Review, 16, 2006, pp. 22–27.