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Sea Poppy II

Ian Hamilton Finlay. Sea Poppy II. 1968

Ian Hamilton Finlay (British, 1925–2006). Sea Poppy II. 1968. Silkscreen print 22 x 17" (55.9 x 43.2 cm). Courtesy David Nolan Gallery, New York. By courtesy of the Estate of Ian Hamilton Finlay

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Sea Poppy is a poem comprised of the names of ships that Finlay observed off the coast of Scotland. In keeping with its content, Sea Poppy’s circular shape has nautical connotations, conjuring both a porthole and a foghorn. An influential figure in the British art world and the international community of Concrete poets from the 1960s until his death, Hamilton Finlay published many posters and books as well as a periodical that contained his radical experiments with found language and typography. His magnum opus, however, was Little Sparta, his home and acres of landscaped gardens in Scotland. Little Sparta was meant to be an ongoing experiment in making a three-dimensional living anthology of poetry with poems incorporated into the architecture, the landscape, and even some of the fauna on the property.