Barry Flanagan (1941-2009)

‘In [the hare] Flanagan found the perfect metaphor for his own elusive character’ – P. Wallis

In Humility (1993), Barry Flanagan brings to captivating life the humour and mythical resonances that have made his hares the defining icon of his work. In a typically anthropomorphic vision, the nimble and enigmatic creature stands tall, here physically aroused and concentrating on a divining rod. Flanagan’s obituary recalls that ‘when the Master of Jesus College, Cambridge, complained that Flanagan’s hares lacked sexuality, the sculptor repaired to his studio and presently unveiled a buck hare with an erection and a divining rod called Humility’ (‘Obituary: Barry Flanagan,’ Daily Telegraph, 14 September 2009): the artist’s playful response to a challenge levelled at his work epitomises his irreverent wit, while also powerfully underscoring the mystical preoccupations that run throughout his oeuvre.

The practice of dowsing – searching for water sources or treasure by divination, usually with a Y-shaped branch of witch hazel – is a rural pseudoscience that chimes with Flanagan’s gleefully anti-rationalist outlook, a quest personified in the puckish and priapic hare. Samuel Sheppard’s 1651 Epigrams theological, philosophical, and romantick explains: ‘Some Sorcerers do boast they have a Rod, / Gather’d with Vowes and Sacrifice, / And (borne about) will strangely nod / To hidden Treasure where it lies.’ Such ancient and mysterious pursuits delighted Flanagan, who was also heavily influenced by the absurdist philosopher Alfred Jarry. ‘What I liked best about Jarry was his invention of the science of Pataphysics, or the science of imaginary solutions. It’s a kind of anti-philosophy that challenges traditional ideas’ (B. Flanagan, quoted in H. U. Obrist, ‘Barry Flanagan in Conversation with Hans Ulrich Obrist’, in E. Juncosa (ed.), Barry Flanagan: Sculpture 1965-2005, exh. cat. Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, 2006, p. 59). The mythopoeic and the absurd combine in the joyously fluid figure of the hare, charmed with Flanagan’s distinctive ludic sensibility. Configured as an avatar of existential and conceptual freedom, the hare is also a symbol of life and fertility, as is rather explicitly highlighted in the present work; for Flanagan, indeed, the hare was endlessly productive as a personal totem of creativity. He believed that the poetic and sculptural existed in all the physical world around us, and the title Humility perhaps suggests a submission to the undercurrents of subconscious and subterranean meaning that flow throughout existence: enchanted and enchanting, Flanagan’s hare bodies forth the magical essence of his work.