WORK OF THE WEEK: Barry Flanagan, Large Left-Handed Drummer, 2006

Barry Flanagan
Large Left-Handed Drummer, 2006
Bronze
490 x 290 x 244 cm
16ft 1 x 9ft 6 x 8ft
Cast 2 from an edition of 5 plus 2 APs

"Thematically the choice of the hare is really quite a rich and expressive sort of mode... 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 expressive 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."

- Barry Flanagan, The Art Magazine, July 1982, p. 39

Barry Flanagan’s Large Left-Handed Drummer (2006) is indicative of his masterful manipulation of material and scale. The 16ft anthropomorphic bronze hare strides forwards, beating his drum in triumphant celebration.

Drawn to the animal’s rich cultural and mythological iconography, Flanagan’s hare sculptures began in 1979, when he spotted a hare in the window of a butcher’s shop. He took it home and made a clay model of it, which he then cast in bronze. The result was Leaping Hare, and the genesis of a series that allowed the sculptor to explore the intricacies of life, and for which he is significantly well-known.

Barry Flanagan (1941 – 2009) was born in Wales. He studied under Anthony Caro, David Annesley, Isaac Witkin and Phillip King at St Martin’s School of Art, graduating in 1966. His early work oscillated between the abstract and the figurative, largely using lumps of quarried Hornton stone or marble. He swiftly received international critical acclaim for his inventive and playful approach to materials, and in 1982, he represented the United Kingdom at the Venice Biennale. In 1991, Flanagan was awarded an OBE and elected to the Royal Academy of Arts. Barry Flanagan’s work has been shown in a great many museums and institutions across the globe, including at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, USA; the Royal Academy of Arts, London; Tate Britain, London; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France and Grant Park, Chicago, USA. Several major retrospectives of his work have been held, including at Fundación ‘La Caixa’, Madrid in 1993, touring to Musée des Beaux-Arts, Nantes in 1994, and at the Irish Museum of Modern Art in collaboration with The Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin, in 2006.

Flanagan’s work can be found in numerous public collections, including the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice, Italy; the Arts Council of England, London; Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, Japan; the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC, USA and the Government Art Collection, London.