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Lot Essay
Conceived in 2005, Flanagan’s Nijinski Five depicts a lively dancing hare on top of a pentagon-shaped base. Here we see Flanagan as a mature sculptor at his very best, and the culmination of his expressive experimentation with the hare that had occupied him from the 1970s onward. Nijinski Five is a quintessential Flanagan sculpture, infusing old sculptural tradition with the unique sense of joie de vivre and creative passion with which his work has become synonymous.
In the present work, Flanagan presents us with an animated and playful interpretation of the legendary Russian ballerina, Vaslav Nijinsky, whose dancing captured the imagination of audiences worldwide. Famous for his spectacularly high leaps, virtuosity, and sympathetic characterisation, he became one of the most celebrated ballerinas, and despite his relatively short career has provided inspiration for books, films, and pieces of artwork alike. Through the surrogate of the hare, Flanagan beautifully captures the elegance of the dancer, posed lightly on one leg with arms gracefully outstretched, whilst also imbuing the work with an irreverent sense of whimsy and humour. Despite the solidity of the bronze from which it is cast, Flanagan manages to instil the sculpture with a wonderful dynamism and sense of animated motion, Nijinski Five’s litheness and grace celebrating the virtuosity of dance, as its sinuous musculature mirrors the form of leaping Nijinsky in endless movement. As Flanagan said in an interview the year after his creation of this piece, ‘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, exhibition catalogue, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, 2006, p. 65).
Above all, Nijinski Five is a celebration of the joy of dance. Born in Prestatyn, North Wales in 1941 to a family of music hall performers, Flanagan grew up surrounded by entertainers and dancers. Flanagan was himself in fact an accomplished dancer, particularly enjoying the tango, and musicality and lyricism were a large feature of his creative approach. His attraction to the Nijinski theme was not only personal, but also rooted in a rich art historical past. Flanagan was a great admirer of Rodin in particular, making overt references to his sculptures in several works, including Thinker on Rock. Indeed, it was after seeing Rodin’s roughly modelled 1912 figure of dancer Nijinsky at an exhibition in 1981 that Flanagan first took inspiration for what was to become one his defining subjects, and he went on to create a series of bronzes in response celebrating the dancer and Rodin’s work, whilst pushing the boundaries of conventional representational art. Flanagan returned to the Nijinski theme a number of times throughout his career, first with Small Nijinski Hare in 1989-90, Nijinski Hare in 1996, and culminating in Nijinski Five, the last Flanagan created of this series.
In the present work, Flanagan presents us with an animated and playful interpretation of the legendary Russian ballerina, Vaslav Nijinsky, whose dancing captured the imagination of audiences worldwide. Famous for his spectacularly high leaps, virtuosity, and sympathetic characterisation, he became one of the most celebrated ballerinas, and despite his relatively short career has provided inspiration for books, films, and pieces of artwork alike. Through the surrogate of the hare, Flanagan beautifully captures the elegance of the dancer, posed lightly on one leg with arms gracefully outstretched, whilst also imbuing the work with an irreverent sense of whimsy and humour. Despite the solidity of the bronze from which it is cast, Flanagan manages to instil the sculpture with a wonderful dynamism and sense of animated motion, Nijinski Five’s litheness and grace celebrating the virtuosity of dance, as its sinuous musculature mirrors the form of leaping Nijinsky in endless movement. As Flanagan said in an interview the year after his creation of this piece, ‘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, exhibition catalogue, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, 2006, p. 65).
Above all, Nijinski Five is a celebration of the joy of dance. Born in Prestatyn, North Wales in 1941 to a family of music hall performers, Flanagan grew up surrounded by entertainers and dancers. Flanagan was himself in fact an accomplished dancer, particularly enjoying the tango, and musicality and lyricism were a large feature of his creative approach. His attraction to the Nijinski theme was not only personal, but also rooted in a rich art historical past. Flanagan was a great admirer of Rodin in particular, making overt references to his sculptures in several works, including Thinker on Rock. Indeed, it was after seeing Rodin’s roughly modelled 1912 figure of dancer Nijinsky at an exhibition in 1981 that Flanagan first took inspiration for what was to become one his defining subjects, and he went on to create a series of bronzes in response celebrating the dancer and Rodin’s work, whilst pushing the boundaries of conventional representational art. Flanagan returned to the Nijinski theme a number of times throughout his career, first with Small Nijinski Hare in 1989-90, Nijinski Hare in 1996, and culminating in Nijinski Five, the last Flanagan created of this series.