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Acrobats

Contributed by ricordo on Nov 3rd, 2017. Artwork published in .
Acrobats
License: All Rights Reserved.

Screenprint, printed at Girdwood, Edinburgh and published by the Wild Hawthorn Press, Lanark in an edition of about 400, 38.8×27.9 cm.

2 Comments on “Acrobats”

  1. Gorgeous! Is this black-and-white version an alternative edition or a reproduction? Both Tate and MoMa show images of this print with orange letters on blue.

    The typeface appears to be Venus breit dreiviertelfett AKA Venus Bold Extended. This latest addition to the Venus series is distinguished from the breit fett (Extra Bold Extended) by the straight section in the counter of ‘b’, among other details.

    This poem is reproduced in the reissue of An Anthology of Concrete Poetry (ed. Emmett Williams, New York: Something Else Press, 1967; reprinted by Primary Information, New York, 2013) with a 1964 date, and typeset in Optima. Finlay comments: “Isolated, single letters are pattern but letters joined in words (as these are) are direction. Those in the ‘acrobats’ poem are both, behaving like the real circus acrobats who are now individual units, now—springing together—diagonals and towers. Properly, the poem should be constructed of cut-out letters, to occupy not a page but an entire wall above a children’s playground.”

  2. According to ricordo, this is probably a black and white reproduction of the color print. It was scanned from Ian Hamilton Finlay: A Visual Primer by Yves Abrioux.

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