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Lot Essay
'This little beast, fast and fleeting, active in the spring, standing upright only for a second or two, can carry many of Flanagan’s purposes.' Tim Hilton
Rendered on an impressive scale, Acrobats (2004) is a magnificent example of the motif which has become synonymous with Barry Flanagan’s oeuvre: the hare. Cast in bronze and covered in black patina, Flanagan presents us with two hares arrested in an acrobatic stance, one skillfully balancing on top of the other’s paws. Captured mid-leap, the lengthy, outstretched limbs of the balancing hare imbue a rich sense of fluid dynamism into the work, transcending the rigid inflexibility of the bronze medium. In their agile activity, Flanagan’s hares take on a palpable human presence, their fleeting forms testament to the anthropomorphic magnetism that has come to define the artist’s practice as a whole. A surrogate for the human form, or rather a cipher for the artist’s own curious persona, Acrobats marks a playful example of the elusive self-portraits that lie at the core of Flanagan’s practice. ‘Flanagan’s hares are thus the image of homo ludens, emblems of creativity and of mischievous disregard for the exercise of ratiocinative thought and for regular order’, Mel Gooding comments; ‘(In this sense they are self-portraits, and very like, in fact)’ (M. Gooding, quoted in ‘First Catch Your Hare: An Essaying in Four unequal Parts and a Coda, with a Salutation’, in E. Juncosa (ed.), Barry Flanagan Sculpture: 1965-2005, exh cat. Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin 2006, p. 179).
After his sighting of the animal dashing across the Sussex Downs in 1979, an event which resulted in its first depiction in the seminal sculpture Leaping Hare that same year, the hare became Flanagan’s most iconic and salient motif. ‘It was a bright icy day, mid morning, with a covering of snow still on the downs’, Flanagan recalled, ‘The road, following the flat and straight part at the base of the dome of the down so there was a moat like gully in which this hare ran’ (B. Flanagan, quoted in C. Preston (ed.), Barry Flanagan, London 2017, p. 18). In 1981, Waddington Galleries, London held the first exhibition of Flanagan’s bronzes with Sculptures in Bronze 1980-1981, a show in which a number of his hare sculptures were exhibited, including an earlier version of his Acrobats. As instantly recognisable as Henry Moore’s reclining women or Alberto Giacometti’s elongated men, Flanagan’s hares have become inextricably linked to his practice, their lithe and agile forms providing the ideal subject for the new figurative aesthetic he explored from the late 1970s.
The artist was also fascinated by the mythologies, legends and superstitions associated with hares, ideas consolidated by his encounter with George Ewart Evans and David Thompson’s anthropological book The Leaping Hare in 1976. The role of ‘The Hare as Trickster’, which is also the title of one of the book’s chapters, resonated in particular with an artist who delighted in the mischievous attributes of the hare, a quality skilfully translated in his Acrobats. Among his most iconic creations, Acrobats marks a monumental example of the deft anthropomorphic wit that lies at the core of Flanagan’s practice. ‘Thematically the choice of the hare is really quite a rich and expressive sort of model ...’, Flanagan has commented, ‘and on a practical level, if you consider what conveys situation and meaning and feeling in a human figure, the range of expression is in fact far more limited than the device of investing an animal—a hare especially—with the attributes of a human being. The ears, for instance, are really able to convey far more than a squint in an eye of a figure, or a grimace on the face of a model’ (B. Flanagan, quoted in interview with J. Bumpus, Barry Flanagan: Prints 1970-1983, exh cat. Tate Gallery, London 1986, p. 15).
We are very grateful to the Barry Flanagan estate for their assistance in preparing this catalogue entry.
Rendered on an impressive scale, Acrobats (2004) is a magnificent example of the motif which has become synonymous with Barry Flanagan’s oeuvre: the hare. Cast in bronze and covered in black patina, Flanagan presents us with two hares arrested in an acrobatic stance, one skillfully balancing on top of the other’s paws. Captured mid-leap, the lengthy, outstretched limbs of the balancing hare imbue a rich sense of fluid dynamism into the work, transcending the rigid inflexibility of the bronze medium. In their agile activity, Flanagan’s hares take on a palpable human presence, their fleeting forms testament to the anthropomorphic magnetism that has come to define the artist’s practice as a whole. A surrogate for the human form, or rather a cipher for the artist’s own curious persona, Acrobats marks a playful example of the elusive self-portraits that lie at the core of Flanagan’s practice. ‘Flanagan’s hares are thus the image of homo ludens, emblems of creativity and of mischievous disregard for the exercise of ratiocinative thought and for regular order’, Mel Gooding comments; ‘(In this sense they are self-portraits, and very like, in fact)’ (M. Gooding, quoted in ‘First Catch Your Hare: An Essaying in Four unequal Parts and a Coda, with a Salutation’, in E. Juncosa (ed.), Barry Flanagan Sculpture: 1965-2005, exh cat. Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin 2006, p. 179).
After his sighting of the animal dashing across the Sussex Downs in 1979, an event which resulted in its first depiction in the seminal sculpture Leaping Hare that same year, the hare became Flanagan’s most iconic and salient motif. ‘It was a bright icy day, mid morning, with a covering of snow still on the downs’, Flanagan recalled, ‘The road, following the flat and straight part at the base of the dome of the down so there was a moat like gully in which this hare ran’ (B. Flanagan, quoted in C. Preston (ed.), Barry Flanagan, London 2017, p. 18). In 1981, Waddington Galleries, London held the first exhibition of Flanagan’s bronzes with Sculptures in Bronze 1980-1981, a show in which a number of his hare sculptures were exhibited, including an earlier version of his Acrobats. As instantly recognisable as Henry Moore’s reclining women or Alberto Giacometti’s elongated men, Flanagan’s hares have become inextricably linked to his practice, their lithe and agile forms providing the ideal subject for the new figurative aesthetic he explored from the late 1970s.
The artist was also fascinated by the mythologies, legends and superstitions associated with hares, ideas consolidated by his encounter with George Ewart Evans and David Thompson’s anthropological book The Leaping Hare in 1976. The role of ‘The Hare as Trickster’, which is also the title of one of the book’s chapters, resonated in particular with an artist who delighted in the mischievous attributes of the hare, a quality skilfully translated in his Acrobats. Among his most iconic creations, Acrobats marks a monumental example of the deft anthropomorphic wit that lies at the core of Flanagan’s practice. ‘Thematically the choice of the hare is really quite a rich and expressive sort of model ...’, Flanagan has commented, ‘and on a practical level, if you consider what conveys situation and meaning and feeling in a human figure, the range of expression is in fact far more limited than the device of investing an animal—a hare especially—with the attributes of a human being. The ears, for instance, are really able to convey far more than a squint in an eye of a figure, or a grimace on the face of a model’ (B. Flanagan, quoted in interview with J. Bumpus, Barry Flanagan: Prints 1970-1983, exh cat. Tate Gallery, London 1986, p. 15).
We are very grateful to the Barry Flanagan estate for their assistance in preparing this catalogue entry.