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Lot Essay
'The great bronze hares which Barry Flanagan has been producing since the 1980s are one of the most personal and recognisable artistic endeavours of the second half of this century. Spectacular in size, bitingly ironic and bold, as well as terribly individualistic, they are totally unlike what we normally see in museums and galleries around the world' (E. Juncosa, Barry Flanagan, exh. cat., Waddington Galleries, London, 1994, unpaged).
Barry Flanagan’s monumental Nijinski Hare on Globe Form, Mirrored, 1994, is a quintessential work that reveals Flanagan's delightful infusion of an age-old sculptural tradition with freshness, creative passion and a whimsical sense of joie de vivre. Based on the Polish-born Russian ballet dancer Nijinsky (1890-1950), Flanagan's iconic hares here present themselves as slender and elongated figures, elegantly poised on top of a world globe with a lightness and grace that profoundly celebrates the virtuosity of performance and dance. Playing with symmetry and balance, Flanagan picks up the theme of the mirrored self that has trickled through his oeuvre as subject of his investigation since the mid-1960s with such works as Sixties Dish, 1970 (Tate Gallery, London). As the artist has explained, ‘I find that the hare is a rich and expressive form that can carry the conventions of the cartoon and the attributes of the human into the animal world. So I use the hare as a vehicle to entertain, abstract from the human figure, choosing the hare to behave as a human occasionally’ (B. Flanagan, quoted in E. Juncosa, Barry Flanagan Sculpture 1965-2005, exh. cat., Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, 2006, p. 65). With other examples of this sculpture been exhibited internationally and housed in such prominent collections as the Sammlung Frieder Burda, Nijinski Hare on Globe Form, Mirrored is a definitive example of Flanagan’s universally celebrated sculptural practice that exemplifies the artist’s enduring fascination with the iconic leitmotif of the hare.
Prompted by the sighting of a hare bounding across the Sussex Downs and reading about the mythological attributes of the hare throughout history in The Leaping Hare by George Edward Evans and David Thomson (1972), Flanagan has since 1979 consistently returned to the hare as his lasting source of inspiration and sculptural archetype. Specifically evoking mythological prehistoric bronze figurines, the archetype of the hare gives rise to a wealth of associations: in Egyptian mythology, for example, the hieroglyph ‘Wn’ is represented by a hare and means ‘to exist’, whilst in Ancient China the Moon Hare symbolizes immortality. Nevertheless, as Michael Compton so aptly reminds us, ‘…these bronzes have all the speed and freedom of drawing as well as the curiosity and playfulness of the hare itself. Although they conjure up millennia of mythology and literature from Aesop to Bugs Bunny, via the creatures that play in the margins of medieval manuscripts, they carry no excess symbolic load’ (M. Compton, Barry Flanagan, exh. cat., The Pace Gallery, New York, 1983, p. 16). Though endowed with human attributes, the hares in Flanagan’s oeuvre are heroic in scale and action - giving rise to a nexus of meanings that continuously fascinate and intrigue the viewer. Having obtained a high degree of material skill and become confident and articulate in his artistic language, here the artist allows his creative spirits to run free and adds a sense of humour and whimsicality to the artistic tradition of bronze sculpture, more traditionally associated both with monuments full of pathos and grandeur. ‘Thematically the choice of the hare is really quite a rich and expressive sort of model,’ Flanagan has explained, ‘the conventions of the cartoon and the investment of human attributes into the animal world (…) is really quite poignant’ (B. Flanagan, quoted in Barry Flanagan: Prints 1970-1983, exh. cat., Tate Gallery, London, 1986, p. 15).
Barry Flanagan’s monumental Nijinski Hare on Globe Form, Mirrored, 1994, is a quintessential work that reveals Flanagan's delightful infusion of an age-old sculptural tradition with freshness, creative passion and a whimsical sense of joie de vivre. Based on the Polish-born Russian ballet dancer Nijinsky (1890-1950), Flanagan's iconic hares here present themselves as slender and elongated figures, elegantly poised on top of a world globe with a lightness and grace that profoundly celebrates the virtuosity of performance and dance. Playing with symmetry and balance, Flanagan picks up the theme of the mirrored self that has trickled through his oeuvre as subject of his investigation since the mid-1960s with such works as Sixties Dish, 1970 (Tate Gallery, London). As the artist has explained, ‘I find that the hare is a rich and expressive form that can carry the conventions of the cartoon and the attributes of the human into the animal world. So I use the hare as a vehicle to entertain, abstract from the human figure, choosing the hare to behave as a human occasionally’ (B. Flanagan, quoted in E. Juncosa, Barry Flanagan Sculpture 1965-2005, exh. cat., Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, 2006, p. 65). With other examples of this sculpture been exhibited internationally and housed in such prominent collections as the Sammlung Frieder Burda, Nijinski Hare on Globe Form, Mirrored is a definitive example of Flanagan’s universally celebrated sculptural practice that exemplifies the artist’s enduring fascination with the iconic leitmotif of the hare.
Prompted by the sighting of a hare bounding across the Sussex Downs and reading about the mythological attributes of the hare throughout history in The Leaping Hare by George Edward Evans and David Thomson (1972), Flanagan has since 1979 consistently returned to the hare as his lasting source of inspiration and sculptural archetype. Specifically evoking mythological prehistoric bronze figurines, the archetype of the hare gives rise to a wealth of associations: in Egyptian mythology, for example, the hieroglyph ‘Wn’ is represented by a hare and means ‘to exist’, whilst in Ancient China the Moon Hare symbolizes immortality. Nevertheless, as Michael Compton so aptly reminds us, ‘…these bronzes have all the speed and freedom of drawing as well as the curiosity and playfulness of the hare itself. Although they conjure up millennia of mythology and literature from Aesop to Bugs Bunny, via the creatures that play in the margins of medieval manuscripts, they carry no excess symbolic load’ (M. Compton, Barry Flanagan, exh. cat., The Pace Gallery, New York, 1983, p. 16). Though endowed with human attributes, the hares in Flanagan’s oeuvre are heroic in scale and action - giving rise to a nexus of meanings that continuously fascinate and intrigue the viewer. Having obtained a high degree of material skill and become confident and articulate in his artistic language, here the artist allows his creative spirits to run free and adds a sense of humour and whimsicality to the artistic tradition of bronze sculpture, more traditionally associated both with monuments full of pathos and grandeur. ‘Thematically the choice of the hare is really quite a rich and expressive sort of model,’ Flanagan has explained, ‘the conventions of the cartoon and the investment of human attributes into the animal world (…) is really quite poignant’ (B. Flanagan, quoted in Barry Flanagan: Prints 1970-1983, exh. cat., Tate Gallery, London, 1986, p. 15).