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Ian Hamilton Finlay  1925-2006

Ian Hamilton Finlay Arcadia [collaboration with George Oliver] 1973
© The estate of Ian Hamilton Finlay
Arcadia [collaboration with George Oliver]  1973

Screenprint on paper
image: 355 x 437 mm
on paper, print

Purchased 1974

P07025

Arcadia is an area of Greece that is traditionally associated with an unspoilt rural paradise. In this print, Finlay draws an ironic parallel between this idea of a natural paradise and the camouflage patterns on a tank. There is also an echo of the Latin phrase ‘Et in Arcadia Ego’ (‘I too was in Arcadia’), used by the seventeenth-century French artist Nicolas Poussin in a painting of a group of shepherds discovering a tomb. Like Poussin, Finlay reminds us that death is present everywhere, even in paradise.

 (From the display caption July 2008)