Finlay, Ian Hamilton

Finlay, Ian Hamilton (1925– ). Scottish artist-poet, born in Nassau, Bahamas, of Scottish parents. He studied briefly at Glasgow School of Art, but originally attracted attention as a poet. In 1963 he began making Concrete poetry, in which the physical appearance of the poem—its shape and typography—is regarded as part of its meaning. From this he developed the idea of using artists and craftspeople—stone carvers, potters, calligraphers, even specialists in neon lighting—to translate his poems into other media. In 1967, with his wife Sue, he moved to Stonypath, a remote farmhouse in the Pentland Hills of ‘Strathclyde, the Infernal Region’ ( Finlay's words), and they created a garden in which many of his poem objects are displayed: ‘it is a garden full of surprises and contrasts, and manages to entertain as well as to stimulate thought. Visual puns and other jokes abound: for instance, a headstone next to a birch tree has the slogan “Bring back the birch”; a real clump of grass resembling an Albrecht Dürer watercolour has Dürer's monogram placed next to it; a tortoise carries the words “Panzer Division” engraved in gothic lettering on its shell; and birds land on a bird tray in the form of an aircraft carrier’ ( Michael Jacobs and Paul Stirton, The Mitchell Beazley Traveller's Guides to Art: Britain & Ireland, 1984). The garden has attracted considerable publicity, not only because of its artistic interest, but also because of Finlay's long-term fight against Strathclyde Council, which has attempted to tax a garden ‘temple’ as a commercial art gallery. Finlay has many admirers, but Brian Sewell dismisses his work as ‘adolescent word-play’ and writes that ‘I find the puffed portent of his enigmatic statements as irksome as his whimsy.’