Giant Saint-Just head on BBC2!

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

Just turned on BBC2 after that last post to see a man wheeling a giant gold head of Saint-Just across a stretch of lawn! Which was very unexpected!
It was an item on the late Ian Hamilton Finlay's 'Little Sparta'! - so if anyone here can get the 'within-7-days' BBC watch again facility for The Culture Show it should be online for a few days (23.20, BBC2, Thursday 24th). The presenter seems weirdly unaware that the garden is a homage to Saint-Just and the Revolution...duh!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/cultureshow/videos/2008/07/s5_e8_land2/index.shtml
This might work (? - the Land Art 2 article on the website).

Comments

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[pevampire.livejournal.com]

giant head of Saint-Just........ that's somehow funny and cool at the same time
Unfortunately, the video wouldn't show....technical problem?

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[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

Oh, that's a shame - I think it may be because of licence fee issues: every household in Britain pays a compulsory licence fee to fund the BBC - it's something like £150 a year! - so it may be that BBC online isn't available oveseas because of that (??). However, the head is called 'Apollon Terroriste" http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1149/1310841507_d7c74d4843.jpg%3Fv%3D0&imgrefurl=http://flickr.com/photos/yellowbookltd/1310841507/&start=1&h=334&w=500&sz=179&tbnid=EKvirJ6a_VqQ1M:&tbnh=87&tbnw=130&hl=en&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dapollon%2Bterroriste%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26safe%3Doff%26client%3Dsafari%26rls%3Den-us%26sa%3DN&um=1 - I hope that link works, but if not you can Google image search and there are a lot of online pages on Ian Hamilton Finlay.
Amazingly, the TV article opened with the presenter flying over a field where a speech of Saint-Just's is carved on giant slabs of rock, then the camera zoomed in on another carved quotation, the gold head, and other sculptures including what looked like a bust of Robespierre on a windowledge - and the presenter just said the artist was "inspired by the classical world"!

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[pevampire.livejournal.com]

Oh I've seen it now. That's a bit cool but why does Saint-Just look so tired????;_; But still I'd like to have one <-
I've been collecting figures of my favorite animation characters and etc. but unfortunately, they don't have anything for er.....revolutionaries.....

Giant Saint-Just head on BBC 2

[(Anonymous)]

Thanks for watching, but do you think that in your Saint-Just excitement you may have missed some other themes in the garden? Andrew Graham-Dixon does mention 'revolution' (he should perhaps have been clearer and said French Revolution) but also touches on Ian Hamilton Finlay's other preoccupations. On the website for the Little Sparta Trust they say the following:

"The themes dealt with in the garden are those which underlie the structures of society. The French Revolution, pre-Socratic views of the nature of the world. The Second World War, the sea and its fishing fleets are among the sources of metaphor and image which are realised in the garden's art works"

Cheers for linking to us anyway, and victoriavandal is right - the video is only visible within the UK for the usual rights / licence fee reasons.

Best

EllenW
The Culture Show website
http://www.bbc.co.uk/cultureshow/