Prints and Drawings Room
View by appointment- Artist
- Ian Hamilton Finlay 1925–2006
- Medium
- Screenprint on paper
- Dimensions
- Image: 355 × 437 mm
- Collection
- Tate
- Acquisition
- Purchased 1974
- Reference
- P07025
Display caption
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.
Gallery label, July 2008
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