Terror / Virtue

Terror / Virtue

Terror / Virtue

By: Ian Hamilton Findlay, 1983
Medium: cast bronze
Size: 52.5mm
Cast by: Lunt
Issue: The Medal, no. 4 (1984)
Edition: 43 plus a number sold by the artist

Category:

Scottish poet, gardener and sculptor Hamilton Finlay has produced several medals. The accompanying text to Terror/Virtue reads: ‘THE GUILLOTINE represents (of course) Terror, the classical columns (a visual ‘rhyme’ borrowed from Puvis) not only Terror’s reverse – here obverse – of Jacobin Virtue, but the true Revolutionary mode. ‘In the system of the French Revolution, what is immoral is politically unsound, what corrupts counter-revolutionary. (Robespierre) ‘There are besides, two little columnes or pillastres of this Throne; love appears on the right hand, and feare of Thy justice is to be seen on the left. (Henry Hawkins) ‘A republican government has virtue as its principle, or else terror. What do they want who want neither virtue nor terror? (Saint-Just) ‘Terror is the piety of the Revolution. (Ian Hamilton Finlay)’