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Lot Essay
Acrobat on Pyramid, conceived and cast in 2000, is a prime example of Barry Flanagan’s mature sculptural language. Finished in the artist’s characteristic black patina, the work belongs to the celebrated series of hares that came to define Flanagan’s oeuvre. The motif originated in the artist’s early encounter with a hare on the Sussex Downs and soon evolved into a central vehicle through which he could reimagine the human figure. As Flanagan himself observed, the hare offered a rich and expressive form, capable of acting as a surrogate through which movement, humour, and theatricality might be explored. Repeated across his sculptural practice, the motif became, in his words, a way of seeing afresh: an endlessly renewed invitation to reimagine established ways of seeing, and to encounter the world anew.
The hare also carries a deep symbolic resonance across cultures. In Chinese tradition it is associated with immortality, while in ancient Egyptian iconography it appears as an emblem of life. Such layered associations lend Flanagan’s hares a subtle universality, even as they remain unmistakably personal inventions.
In Acrobat on Pyramid, the artist’s characteristic playfulness is in full display. The figure balances precariously on a single foreleg, while its remaining limbs and elongated ears arc upward, suspended in a moment of improbable equilibrium. Flanagan frequently developed his compositions first in clay, exploiting the medium’s pliancy and allowing the form to emerge through the free, intuitive movement of hand and thumb. In the present work, that initial spontaneity is preserved in the fluid modelling of the body; yet the sculpture is ultimately realised in bronze, whose weight and permanence lend striking contrast to the figure’s apparent lightness and agility.
The hare’s anatomy deliberately defies natural logic, embracing instead a realm of playful invention. In doing so, Acrobat on Pyramid illustrates the inherent surrealism at the heart of his practice, where wit, guise, transformation, and the elasticity of form converge.
The hare also carries a deep symbolic resonance across cultures. In Chinese tradition it is associated with immortality, while in ancient Egyptian iconography it appears as an emblem of life. Such layered associations lend Flanagan’s hares a subtle universality, even as they remain unmistakably personal inventions.
In Acrobat on Pyramid, the artist’s characteristic playfulness is in full display. The figure balances precariously on a single foreleg, while its remaining limbs and elongated ears arc upward, suspended in a moment of improbable equilibrium. Flanagan frequently developed his compositions first in clay, exploiting the medium’s pliancy and allowing the form to emerge through the free, intuitive movement of hand and thumb. In the present work, that initial spontaneity is preserved in the fluid modelling of the body; yet the sculpture is ultimately realised in bronze, whose weight and permanence lend striking contrast to the figure’s apparent lightness and agility.
The hare’s anatomy deliberately defies natural logic, embracing instead a realm of playful invention. In doing so, Acrobat on Pyramid illustrates the inherent surrealism at the heart of his practice, where wit, guise, transformation, and the elasticity of form converge.