Ian Hamilton Finlay, 4 Blades
Collections: Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo; MACBA, Barcelona
Title: 4 Blades
Author: Ian Hamilton Finlay
Publisher: Estampa Ediciones, Madrid
Publication date: 1986
Format: Folder with 6 lithographs
Size: 8.3x8.3cm
Condition: Fine
Stock Number: RB03881
”Finlay first received international attention for his guillotine installation A View to the Temple at Documenta 8 in Kassel in 1987 and the guillotine is featured in this exhibition with Four Blades (1987). Displayed high up on a single wall on their own, four large slate guillotine blades are individually inscribed with quotations about terror from seventeenth-century French painter Nicolas Poussin, eighteenth-century critic Denis Diderot, Maximilien Robespierre and finally a quotation from Finlay himself: “Terror is the piety of the revolution.” Although it is tempting to project an anti-war message on the exhibition, this does not address the poetry within the works. For Finlay, war and peace, love and violence are interdependent ideas. Without the violence of the Terror, the physical display of love and loss referenced in Aphrodite of the Terror would not exist. Without terror there would be no revolution.” – Review of Ian Hamilton Finlay 1789 1794, Victoria Miro, London. Samantha Johnson writing in Aesthetica, 16 July 2015
Collections: Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo; MACBA, Barcelona
Title: 4 Blades
Author: Ian Hamilton Finlay
Publisher: Estampa Ediciones, Madrid
Publication date: 1986
Format: Folder with 6 lithographs
Size: 8.3x8.3cm
Condition: Fine
Stock Number: RB03881
”Finlay first received international attention for his guillotine installation A View to the Temple at Documenta 8 in Kassel in 1987 and the guillotine is featured in this exhibition with Four Blades (1987). Displayed high up on a single wall on their own, four large slate guillotine blades are individually inscribed with quotations about terror from seventeenth-century French painter Nicolas Poussin, eighteenth-century critic Denis Diderot, Maximilien Robespierre and finally a quotation from Finlay himself: “Terror is the piety of the revolution.” Although it is tempting to project an anti-war message on the exhibition, this does not address the poetry within the works. For Finlay, war and peace, love and violence are interdependent ideas. Without the violence of the Terror, the physical display of love and loss referenced in Aphrodite of the Terror would not exist. Without terror there would be no revolution.” – Review of Ian Hamilton Finlay 1789 1794, Victoria Miro, London. Samantha Johnson writing in Aesthetica, 16 July 2015
Collections: Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo; MACBA, Barcelona
Title: 4 Blades
Author: Ian Hamilton Finlay
Publisher: Estampa Ediciones, Madrid
Publication date: 1986
Format: Folder with 6 lithographs
Size: 8.3x8.3cm
Condition: Fine
Stock Number: RB03881
”Finlay first received international attention for his guillotine installation A View to the Temple at Documenta 8 in Kassel in 1987 and the guillotine is featured in this exhibition with Four Blades (1987). Displayed high up on a single wall on their own, four large slate guillotine blades are individually inscribed with quotations about terror from seventeenth-century French painter Nicolas Poussin, eighteenth-century critic Denis Diderot, Maximilien Robespierre and finally a quotation from Finlay himself: “Terror is the piety of the revolution.” Although it is tempting to project an anti-war message on the exhibition, this does not address the poetry within the works. For Finlay, war and peace, love and violence are interdependent ideas. Without the violence of the Terror, the physical display of love and loss referenced in Aphrodite of the Terror would not exist. Without terror there would be no revolution.” – Review of Ian Hamilton Finlay 1789 1794, Victoria Miro, London. Samantha Johnson writing in Aesthetica, 16 July 2015
