Ecstatic Alphabets/Heaps of Language

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Tye Cringle

Ian Hamilton Finlay. Tye Cringle. 1967–72

Ian Hamilton Finlay (British, 1925–2006). Tye Cringle. 1967–72. Carved wood and paint, 35 1/2 x 11 3/4 x 6" (90.2 x 29.8 x 15.2 cm). Private collection, courtesy Christine Burgin, New York. By courtesy of the Estate of Ian Hamilton Finlay

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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. Tye Cringle, a tombstone-shaped sculpture inscribed with a poem created from the names of ships, was designed to be exhibited outdoors.