Ian Hamilton Finlay | Homage to Robert Lax

 

Ian Hamilton Finlay

Homage to Robert Lax

Dunsyre, Scotland: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1974

12 pp., 25.5 x 10.5 cm., saddle-stitched

Edition size unknown

"Homage to Robert Lax comprises a poem, printed in red and black on plain white pages, consisting of combinations of four words: Richthofen, Reinhardt, crimson and black.

The work is a response or possibly even a riposte to Robert Lax's poem 'For Ad Reinhardt', a work itself consisting of the two words: black, blue. Lax was a close friend of the American minimalist painter Ad Reinhardt, best known for his 'black' paintings of the 1960s, works composed entirely of different shades of black.

Finlay's homage recalls the layout of many Robert Lax poems in the form of slim vertical columns, giving each syllable its own line, often reproduced from handwriting rather than typeset.

Departing from its source of inspiration, Finlay's poem extends into a theme common in his work and encountered in other of his homage series, that of military iconography. Thus he matches 'Reinhardt' with the name of Manfred Freiherr von Richthofen, the famed World War I German fighter pilot, also known as the Red Baron and on the cover, juxtaposes the Iron Cross with a second cross of simple compositional design favoured by Ad Reinhardt in many of his paintings.

Finally, where Lax invariably used the simplest colour-words, Finlay invokes poetic associations with 'crimson’.”