Adam's IMPORTANT IRISH ART 1st June 2022

58 36 BARRY FLANAGAN (1941 - 2009) Horse on Anvil (2001) Bronze, 55.2 x 50.8 x 21cm (21¾ x 20 x 8¼”) Incised with the artist’s monogram and stamped by the foundry on the base. No. 4 from an edition of 8 plus 4 artist’s proofs Provenance: Private Collection, Dublin € 20,000 - 30,000 Barry Flanagan’s Drummer , a monumentally elon- gated figure of a striding hare beating a bodhrán, resplendently located in the Royal Hospital Kilmain- ham, is the Irish Museum of Modern Art’s unofficial mascot. As part of IMMA and the Hugh Lane’s joint retrospective of his work in 2006, several more bronze hares were installed along O’Connell St in Dublin. There were comparable installations of hares elsewhere, including New York City. Flana- gan, a genuinely anarchic presence, was by then firmly associated with the hare, which had become for him a playful alter ego, but horses, cougars and elephants are also important members of his per- sonal bronze menagerie. Horse sculptures by him are prominently sited in Cambridge and Montreal, for example. Even as he altered and distorted the vari- ous animals’ literal appearance in his elaborately anthropomorphic works, the elegantly fluent sculptures retain an uncanny fidelity to the source creatures and, vitally, their individual personalities. Flanagan’s approach is encapsulated in his often cited statement explaining that, for him, each subject reveals itself to his “sculptural awareness” and, it should be said, anyone who spent time with him attested to the extraordinary intensity of his at- tention. He first turned towards animal sculptures in the late 1970s, he said, when he saw a hare bound- ing across the Sussex Downs: a free spirit. That idea, the animal and by extension the human as free spirit, shines through all of his animal figures. In 1979 he saw the touring exhibition The Horses of San Marco at the Royal Academy. Some of the most remarkable equine sculptures ever made, believed to be from Constantinople, they top the facade of San Marco in Venice (now in facsimile form). These sculptures had a comparably energising effect on Flanagan. In his horse sculptures he takes the horse as a standard component of classical statuary, usually supporting some illustrious rider and, as with the majestic San Marco horses, restores to it its independence, imbuing it with qualities of playful irreverence, nobility and energy. This is particularly true of his kouros horses, which refer to classical Greek sculptural figures and also, subtly, incorpo- rate aspects of the hares in their lean, elongated forms. Here the animal’s lively, buoyant energy plays against the weight and density of the anvil. Flanagan began his artistic life a long way from representational bronze sculpture, using such ma- terials as rope, sand and flax, bound by fabric sup- ports, in installations that resonated with elements of conceptual and land art, and the arte povera movements (he collaborated with Yoko Ono at one point). Yet Flanagan was always an independent force following his own line of development. His oft acknowledged enthusiasm for Alfred Jarry, the iconoclastic writer known for his singular drama Ubu Roi and his invention of pataphysics - a kind of alternative, imaginary physics - gives a good indica- tion of the flavour of Flanagan’s imagination. Born in North Wales to Irish-Welsh parents, he steadily built an international reputation, exhibiting extensively and representing Britain at the Venice Biennale in 1982. He became an Irish citizen around the turn of the century. A restless spirit, he saw himself as essentially an itinerant artist and spent considerable time in Ibiza, Dublin, Amsterdam, Barcelona and elsewhere. Aidan Dunne, May 2022