B A R R Y
F L A N A G A N
A N I M A L V E G E T A B L E M I N E R A L
B A R R Y
F L A N A G A N
A N I M A L V E G E T A B L E M I N E R A L Works 1964–1983
Waddington Custot Galleries
I N T R O D U C T I O N
at best sculpture is unnameable at least a sculpture may name. the name betrays the sculpture, even if it could have no other name. the name is as funny as its description is a joke. Barry Flanagan, Silâns 11, April 1965
Barry Flanagan composed this concrete poem while he was on the Advanced Sculpture course at St Martin̓s School of Art. It demonstrates his diverse commitment to redefine sculpture’s parameters, when shape or form is not restricted to a three dimensional object. For Flanagan, the activity of making sculpture, although primarily visual, involved orchestrating ways to demonstrate the sensual and the tactile; surface, colour, weight, balance, sound and light. From the outset of his career, Flanagan questioned expectations and value structures; literally, through his experimentation to test the limits of the genre and so to redefine sculpture’s conventions, and also politically, in terms of his proactive role in promoting the work of a group of British artists, who rapidly became known under the rubric of Conceptual Art. Flanagan was a leading participant in the growing network of younger artists, curators and dealers across Europe, the United States and Japan during the 1960s and 70s. His work was included in exhibitions now heralded as landmarks for their situation of new art practices; When Attitudes Become Form, Bern, Op Losse Schroeven, Amsterdam, Seth Siegelaub’s One Month calendar exhibition, New York, Land Art T V exhibition, Berlin, all in 1969, and Information, New York, and Between Man and Matter, Tokyo, in 1970. In London, the Rowan Gallery’s first exhibition of Flanagan’s work opened in August 1966, at the same time as Claes Oldenburg’s show at Robert Fraser Gallery. Several critics responded to the artists’ interest in ‘soft sculpture’, but Flanagan’s
approach pointed to a ‘promising departure’ [1]. Paul Overy remarked on how Flanagan’s sculptures confounded viewers because, although made from cloth, they looked, ‘soft to touch, like cuddly toys, but are in fact rock hard – which is nicely disturbing’ [2], whereas Oldenburg’s washstand and engine, objects that are expected to be hard, looked soft and were soft. Word about Flanagan’s Rowan show spread fast and the questions it raised and the excitement it caused is still relevant to art practices today. Bruce McLean was already studying at St Martin̓s when Flanagan enrolled in 1964. They worked alongside each other in the sculpture studios and had a high regard for each other’s approach, both equally quizzical, they had overlapping interests in terms of approach to experimentation and inquiry but each pursued an individual path. McLean’s contributions to the visual arts from the 1960s include performance, sculpture and painting, and his work continues to impact on younger artists. And, like Flanagan, McLean enjoys the collaboration of shared artistic endeavours. In the following conversation, McLean recalls the buzz of excitement and curiosity that Flanagan brought to St Martin̓s and describes some of the dynamics of his creative sculptural processes. I would like to thank Bruce McLean for joining me in conversation. I would also like to thank Stéphane Custot of Waddington Custot Galleries for the opportunity to present the exhibition, Barry Flanagan: Animal, Vegetable, Mineral. Jo Melvin
1 Conroy Maddox, ‘Barry Flanagan: Rowan Gallery’, Arts Review, 6 August 1966, p.317 2 Paul Overy, ‘Please do not touch’, The Listener, 18 August 1966
I N
C O N V E R S A T I O N
Bruce McLean and Jo Melvin, London, 20th January 2016
Jo Melvin: I’d like to start off by asking you your impressions of Barry when you first met him at St Martin’s in 1964. Bruce McLean: I remember the very first thing he made. He had two sculpture modelling stands, with an 8 × 4 board on top, on which he modelled a naked woman. It was the most dreadful bit of modelling I’ve seen in my life! This naked woman with very explicit sexual parts was so appalling that we had a real pop at him saying, ‘How could you do this? And, anyway, we don’t do modelling here, we do modern sculpture! Steel! Proper sculpture, banging bits of wood together and bending bits of plywood, using fibreglass’. And we were quite horrified, because he didn’t look like he would have made something like that. Anyway, that was the first experience I had of Barry and I don’t know what happened to this piece he made, which I found quite curious. On another occasion he modelled a baby’s head, a rather beautiful little object and he made seven or eight casts which he piled up on top of each other. It looked like an erect penis which I think was what it was meant to look like, but nobody discussed whether it was, or not, and I didn’t discuss it with him. I thought that was an odd thing to have done, it reminded me of Brancusi. I found it quite perplexing that he was using clay because no one else was. Early on, he did other things as well, with bits of metal, but these were the first things I actually remember. He was a very funny, affable and interesting man. We were all in Room K and all got on very well. J: Who else worked in Room K? B: Roelof Louw, Big Jock (ex-welder), Titch from Cornwall (woodcarver), Gerard Hemsworth, Wendy Taylor, Ian Spencer, Tony Cole, Sheena Matheson, Don Heffron, David Bainbridge, Andy Hall, Geoff Barnsfather, Chuck Kyle, George Passmore and Shirley Cameron. There was a room round the corner, which was ours as well, and we moved between them.
J: Were you on the ground floor? B: No, we were on the sixth floor, which was the most ridiculous place for a sculpture class. We were all together, making different things and Barry brought in all this sewn-up hessian which he started to fill with plaster. We knew about soft sculptures, it was in the air, but he got the soft thing and made it hard, so I thought, ‘Oh, this is quite curious’. He started making these funny sack sculptures, one had a thistle on the top. J: He did that in ’65, it was included in his first show at the Rowan Gallery in 1966. B: He made a lot of these pieces. He was doing stuff we were all intrigued by and thought, ‘This is quite interesting’. It didn’t look like anything else, it was completely unique and was actually rather exciting. I really remember the Rowan Gallery show with carpet on the floor. He had the pile of sand [ringn ’66 (1966)] and a piece of thread with a piece of paper hanging off the ceiling [mmmzzmm (1966)]. What was so good about it in this particular space, in my opinion, was that it was on a carpet. You don’t go to galleries now with a carpet, very few galleries have carpets. J: Do you remember the colour of the carpet? B: I think it was a plain grey carpet and it looked ... What is interesting is, the way you approach sculpture on a carpet is different to approaching it on a concrete or wooden floor and I thought he’d actually got this right, this funny, soft-looking but hard sculpture, on soft carpet, and the pile of sand. The show was a huge success. He became an overnight hit, which I could understand. J: So it completely transformed the space by having that carpet?
fig.1 Untitled performance (with modelled clay head), roof of St Martin̓s School of Art, London, 1964
B: I don’t know if he put the carpet down, I think it was there. It was just a ‘Cadogany’ type space [‘Cadogany’ refers to the gallery’s Belgravia location, near Cadogan Square]. J: Unfortunately, there are no installation shots of that exhibition. Luckily, we have a list of the works included. When the gallery changed location it didn’t have a carpet, you can see from the installation photographs of his later exhibitions. B: What a shame there were no photos. And that is surprising! Barry was good at documentation and having the works photographed, you would have thought there would have been shots of that. It was an astonishing show. J: I would like to ask you about these photos taken by someone on the roof of St Martin’s when Barry was actually ... B: He did a lot of his art, sculpture, on the roof for some reason. J: Yes, lots of artists put sculptures on the roof, but these document more of a happening, the destruction of work; a modelled head which you can see here, he dropped it, it broke, and then you see the shattered fragments on the floor [fig.1]. B: This must have been around the time of those destructive chaps. He was very friendly with John Latham and Gustav Metzger. John Latham used to come in on a Thursday night to teach evening classes and I went to a couple of them which I thought were interesting because I quite liked John Latham. I thought he was very funny, a bit like a sort of Spike Milligan who used to hang around down in the basement at St Martin’s. I think he knew John Latham. They all kind of looked the same, thin with straggly beards and Barry fitted in with that quite well somehow ... even though he was quite different from them.
J: Barry was part of the A PG, the Artist Placement Group, with John and Barbara Latham. They began the discussions when they were at St Martin’s. B: The Latham evening classes, the destruction stuff and Better Books, across the street in Charing Cross Road, with poets like John Sharkey and Bob Cobbing ... holding events and readings, it was really interesting. I didn’t go to everything. You went to some things and you got the feeling something was going on. I always got the feeling
they were something separate from me. Barry seemed to know something that we didn’t know. I think it was because he was a pataphysicist. I don’t know when he became a pataphysicist. J: He was interested in pataphysics from 1963 onwards. Do you remember the magazine that he did at St Martin̓s called Silâns? It was full of pataphysical poetry, concrete poetry and the crossovers with sculptural practice. B: Was Rudy Leenders involved? He was an American or a Canadian, very tall with glasses ... Henry Chopin, he was in it. There was a sort of sub-culture. J: Was that through the pataphysical interests? B: I don’t know. It wasn’t a bad feeling it was just you always felt they were cooking something up that you weren’t party to. You weren’t excluded, but I didn’t want to be completely included, if you know what I mean. J: Yes, so you sort of kept slightly distant. B: I kept myself to myself. There was no snotty behaviour or anything, but they worked together. It was around Latham and Gustav Metzger. Metzger gave a talk at St Martin̓s where he destroyed a big cloth structure, a painting, and he threw acid at it and it disintegrated, that was very interesting. I wasn’t there when Barry and John chewed Greenberg’s book Art and Culture in their performance, ‘Still and Chew’. I could have been ... I mean, I would have joined in because I didn’t have much time for Clement Greenberg. He used to come in and do dreadful talks and never said anything of any importance and was all very American and style, smoking Gitanes cigarettes from a blue packet, which matched his two-tone suit, and we didn’t like him at all ... J: Well, certainly Barry didn’t!
B: No, nobody with any intelligence liked him. The thing going on with John Latham, the A PG, I went to a few meetings at his house but, again, it was not the Royal Academy, but it was a sort of club and I didn’t want to be part of a club or a movement. J: Did it feel slightly cliquey would you say? B: Yes, a little bit, but Barry was much warmer than the other people who were a bit cooler. Incidentally, Barry was a very good friend of John James, the poet, who is a very good friend of mine. Barry was a big fan of John and I am too. J: He wrote a very beautiful poem response to Barry’s rope piece in When Attitudes Become Form. I wondered if you remembered this early work from St Martin̓s, n’existe pas [1964] [fig.2]. B: Yeah, it was painted white metal. I remember that! J: He painted it up to the edge of the words, leaving them in negative space, rather than painting the letters on the surface. B: I remember he found it. It’s a bit of an R SJ. J: Can we talk about Gene Baro? I understand from Barry that he came into St Martin̓s. Do you remember this? B: Yes, he came because he started to organise a show, wait, when did Barry leave? J: Barry left in 1966, same time as you. He had already met Gene Baro at the end of 1964. B: I left and I got a teaching job and had nothing more to do with St Martin̓s. Then Barry phoned up and said, ‘Where are you, what has happened to you? You’ve made all that work and now you’ve just disappeared, doing nothing?’, I said, ‘No, not doing nothing! I’m just here’. He
fig.2 n ’existe pas (1964), steel, paint Room K, sculpture studio, St Martin̓s School of Art, London
I had made work with paper and paint, and it had all washed away. So we went further down the street, looking for this invisible work! And I could see that Baro was getting quite bemused, but Barry wasn’t fazed at all. Barry said, ‘Where was it?’ And I said, ‘There was a piece there, but someone has removed it’. And Barry said, ‘Don’t you care?’ I said, ‘Well, I left it there, what can I do? They are going to tidy the pavement ... there was a piece over there’. So we went for a beer and that was the end of that. That was Baro’s one and only visit to Barnes. He came to look at the invisible works and Barry very generously brought him down. He didn’t have to bring him down, but he was curious as to what I was doing, after having made so much work when I was a student, and he thought I can’t have stopped, which I hadn’t. But he actually came and took the time to come and see me, which I thought was more than generous.
said, ‘I would like to bring this American critic, Gene Baro, down to see you’. Baro was organising the Sculpture out of the sixties show, which took place at the IC A in 1970. We had a big, flat colour painting in our house and a black cat, and this big man with corduroy trousers came. He said, ‘I like that painting’. He liked the painting and he liked the cat. He was a very affable chap. He said, ‘What about all that work you are making Bruce?’, and I said, ‘Well, it’s in the street’. ‘Oh, right.’ So we went into the street, where
J: There are two things I would like to pull out from that. One is to talk a bit more about Gene Baro, because Baro was one of the critics that was extremely taken with Barry’s work when he first saw it at that Rowan show. He had already written about him in an article in Studio International and he obviously knew him from St Martin̓s. He must have done a little teaching or came in for a talk? He referred to Flanagan’s first show at the Rowan as ‘Animal, Vegetable, Mineral’ [art and artists, vol.1, no.6, September 1966], partly invoking the game-playing and also the enigmatic quality of its materiality and the changing of thresholds, and not quite knowing where you are. So, like what you were just talking about, about being disconcerted, surprised, and curious. The other is the article that came out in Time magazine, which was called ‘The Avant -Garde: Subtle, Cerebral, Elusive’ [Time, vol.92, no.21, 22 November 1968, pp.70 –7 7], and this made Barry really, really angry. It focused on American artists, as if the American artists had the claim on instigating new practices. Barry was incensed by this and he put together the Conceptual Art
fig.3 left to right: casb 3 ’67, sand, canvas; al casb 4 ’67 (1967), sand, canvas; r ’2 ’67 (1967) rope, hessian, string [also functions to carry rope (pl corner 12) 2 ’67 (1967)]; casb 5 ’67 (1967), sand, string, hessian Installation in garage space, Kilburn, London, 1967 fig.4 casb 5 ’67 (1967) Gifted to Gene Baro by Barry Flanagan, 1967
B: Great stuff, this! Oh God, it makes me quite sad. It was so exciting then, there was nothing like it. J: What? You mean that generation of excitement? B: Barry was absolutely right. The thing I was always impressed by him was that he did it. He said, ‘No, we are all meeting at mur, mur, mur, at this house mur, mur, mur and you are bringing the photographs and I am putting them on boards and we are having the boards photographed’. He had an elliptical way of speaking and used ‘erm’ or other sounds sometimes instead of words. He organised the whole situation. He didn’t have to do that. There aren’t many artists like that around now. J: It is very significant that he chose to do it.
exhibition panels to demonstrate the absurdity of this claim and to situate the U K’s younger artists’ work that he found most engaging. B: Yes, I know. J: Yes, of course, you know. And he got the cash from Alan Power to make it and take it to New York. I wonder if you remember? He went round the States giving lectures about his peers, you, himself and Roelof Louw and the Event Structure Research Group, John Latham and Richard Long. He had slides from all of you.
B: Yes, he chose to do it and, in so doing, he opened a can of worms because, what he realised was, that’s what America did, make claims for movements. Minimalism, it was not American or exclusive. There was Don Judd, Robert Morris and Dan Flavin and ... but what about all the Germans, Dutch and English, and there are book after book on Minimalism which only feature American artists. Anyway, Barry showed panels in New York and gave a lecture, and who was there? Michael Compton! Michael Compton was a Tate Gallery Keeper and one of the first people in British institutions to take notice and he was in New York when Barry did this talk! I think it was a great thing Barry did. He changed the course of what happened here, because none of us would be doing anything. Because artists like Konrad Fischer [Konrad Lueg] and Gerhard Richter saw Barry do this thing, we were all noticed and invited to show with Konrad Fischer in Dusseldorf. This changed everything. Richard Long showed there, then Jan Dibbets, and myself. What it has actually made transparent, over the course of history, is you realise that the whole Abstract Expressionist thing was also claimed by America
and funded by the central government. That is what Patrick Heron was saying for years and we thought he was somewhat obsessed. Turns out he was right!
very Flanagan to have a carpet in the studio. I went to the Hayward Gallery once and my father said, ‘Have you seen that terrific stool there? Terrific! Who made that?’ Barry Flanagan.
J: Talking about Patrick Heron brings us back again to Studio International and to the personalities associated with the magazine. The editor, Peter Townsend, gave Patrick Heron the platform to point out the cultural hegemony of the arts from the States. Could you say something about Charles Harrison, Townsend’s assistant? Because his involvement with you, Barry and the sculptors from St Martin̓s and then later Art & Language, had a very particular role.
J: Was your father an architect?
B: I can’t remember how I got involved. I think Barry introduced me to Charles Harrison. They lived nearby. Charles said, ‘Why don’t you write a piece about this show that you think is so dreadful, for Studio International?’ I thought, ‘That’s quite interesting, I could write ...’, then I thought, ‘Oh God, if I write this I’m going to be attacked’, so I thought I better make a photographic piece called, People Who Make Art in Glass Houses [1970], therefore criticising myself. So that diffused the situation for me. The piece was a text and photo piece made for the magazine, which neatly helped me from getting bashed up by the sculptors I criticised! I always thought that was quite an adventurous policy, to take someone that was only twenty-five and to actually give him two or three pages in Studio International as a work, and that’s why I did some other work specifically for the magazine. J: Did you ever go to Barry’s studio? The one in Vauxhall? B: No. I liked the sound of the studio that he had, with the garage full of sand, and he just filled the bags with sand and made the sculptures, and if the sculptures had to come back he just emptied the bags. Ah, those are great pieces. That makes me think about that carpet. It was
B: Yes, a good architect, very good. J: Did you know that Barry started out doing architecture and then switched to sculpture? B: No, I didn’t know that. My father thought these were the best benches he had seen for years and he said, ‘Barry Flanagan made these? He must be some sort of a genius’. J: They were intricately constructed but pragmatic. B: I liked the diversification of it. Do you know the story of the bowler hat? He came to St Martin̓s with a bowler hat on, for a week, and someone said, ‘You were wearing a bowler hat for a week, why aren’t you wearing it this week?’ He said, ‘Didn’t really work’. J: He liked the saying, ‘If you want to get ahead, get a hat’. He certainly had a very good line with hats. B: I remember he got very bashed up in a punch up in the street. J: Did he? For wearing a hat? B: No, he was watching the people do a card trick and he knew how they were doing it. He started doing it and was like, ‘That’s not right’, and they went in. They nearly beat him to death. He was a very mercurial and energetic sort of individual, Irish, odd presence, in one door and out the next. I don’t remember going for drinks with Barry around St Martin̓s.
J: He certainly did go for drinks around St Martin̓s, with John Latham for instance. B: They seemed very similar ... that’s the wrong word, there was a chemistry. I was a very big fan of John Latham and enjoyed having chats about physics and time, and Metzger too was very refreshing. J: Do you remember some of the events at Better Books? B: Well, there was one I went to where you had to go through piles and piles of newspaper to get in. The whole shop was turned into this kind of environment. There were lots of drawers. There was one drawer where there was a polythene bag with severed toes in it from a hospital. I don’t know who put that in it, Bruce Lacey maybe? I didn’t get on well with him, couldn’t fathom him at all, Mr Egocentric. It was really interesting that they turned the whole bookshop basement into a work, a labyrinth of some sort. The Better Books thing was really fantastic. They had readings. Bob Cobbing would come in and do readings and sound works and Allen Ginsberg would come into St Martin̓s and do some recitals. Did Barry get them in? J: Barry was certainly involved. I don’t think he actually got them in but he was creating performance pieces, concrete poetry and sound pieces. Do you remember Barry actually doing that, making performance of concrete poetry? B: I remember him doing something at St Martin̓s. I remember him being really busy all the time. He looked like he was on the case! J: Was he well turned out at this point as well? Whenever he is photographed, he is always wearing a suit, looking very smart. Was this his normal mode of clothing?
B: Yes, he didn’t look quite right. He didn’t look like how a sculptor should have looked. Everyone was wearing jeans and dungarees and he was wearing tweed trousers! J: So, very different, for instance, from Carl Andre! B: Absolutely! With Barry there was obviously some sort of interest in the sartorial but I remember there was some critique about his sartorial, I think it didn’t look the way he actually wanted it to look. J: Slightly out of sync? B: Well, with himself, he was in a sense. He was out of sync with everything else, but even within his own terms he was out of sync, within the language that he was trying to create, he hadn’t got the shoes right or something. J: Well, he preferred sandals! Is that a characteristic, that out of sync-ness? Do you think it follows through in how he approached making work? B: No, I have to disassociate the clothing arrangements from the sculpture, which I thought was completely great. It was its own thing and it didn’t have to be this, or that, or the main thing. J: Did you and Barry trade work? B: Barry had a Glass on Grass piece of mine and he swapped it for a pile of hessian sculpture. J: Do you still have it? B: No, my daughter found it and used it for curtains in her house in Brighton, didn’t realise it was a sculpture! Well, she said she didn’t but I don’t really believe her. It was quite a nice violet colour. I’m a bit annoyed about that to
fig.5 blue cross arrangement (1969), foam, canvas, sand Originally in the collection of Keith Milow, later partially destroyed fig.6 l ine 3 ’68 (1968), felt, string I nstallation in the artist’s studio, Vauxhall, London, 1969
be honest. It’s not like she was uneducated in the sense of what was what. She knew who Barry Flanagan was. It was to one side in my room and hadn’t been on display in a glass case or something. J: So, it didn’t have an aura around it? B: It disappeared. J: This is like the story of Keith Milow’s sculpture that he bought from the Rowan Gallery, called blue cross arrangement [1969] [fig.5]. It’s two bags filled with sand, placed across each other, and then in between is the filling used for packaging boxes made of foam, fibrous stuff, and there were four pieces of that in between. When Milow moved to the United States someone just thought it was packing and chucked it. Comparatively recently, Keith asked Barry whether he would be prepared to remake those bits and Barry said, ‘No, the memory of the piece completes the piece’. B: Yes, I mean loss is only stuff after all. I just think he was an inspiration to the whole school, to the whole department. We all knew he was something else. He had a spirit which affected it and affected the situation, which is more important than anything else. It showed his generosity of spirit. Being a great artist isn’t about making stuff and putting it on walls and selling it, that’s the least of it. He also understood the ‘magic man’ bit. He was a magic man, Barry Flanagan. J: Having an instinctive understanding to grasp something, pull it in from all these different sources? B: And he knew who was alright and who wasn’t alright. He knew who would be interesting to do something with.
fig.7 Works dated 1966 / 67 and 1967 [titles not recorded], canvas, string Installation in the artist’s studio, Vauxhall, London, 1969
J: And situating you all in the States with that portable Conceptual Art exhibition? B: That can’t be stated enough, what he did. I never heard anyone say it. J: Well, it is very important and it’s good you are saying it now. B: I have said it before, but I’ve never written it down. We were all separate, but we were all ... I wish I had been more involved with the Latham bit, at the time. J: Retrospectively? B: Yes, retrospectively. I did go to one or two A PG meetings that were quite interesting, but I didn’t actually get myself placed anywhere. It’s a long time ago, it was an interesting time. J: It’s fifty years since Barry’s first exhibition at the Rowan Gallery. B: We should have a party! How did Alex GregoryHood find Barry? J: Phillip King knew Alex Gregory-Hood because he showed at the gallery. He suggested Barry would be a good person to meet, so they had a conversation and he was offered that show as soon as he finished at St Martin̓s. B: I didn’t know that. I was very fond of Phillip King, I’m glad you told me. J: I wondered if you remembered this [line 3 ’68 (1968), fig.6], the line piece with the hanging? B: Funny world isn’t it, people making funny old things, bags and sand, plaster and knots, bits and pieces. And him with some trousers on there and they are not necessarily the trousers you would be making a sculpture in! I remember
thinking, ‘This is easy, this is good, Barry has actually got onto something really interesting here about form’. J: The magic of getting building materials? B: You can fill your trousers full of it. J: These canvases are from ’66 [canvas floor piece 1 (1966) and canvas b, ’66 / 67 (1966 – 7)]. He did a whole series of canvas floor pieces. They’re cut with a pair of scissors and placed on the floor, which is why I was interested in
that carpet you were talking about before at Rowan. B: I am pretty sure it was laid down, but what is quite interesting is that it may not have been. J: It is a very different way of looking at work. B: If you went to Tate Modern and it was all carpet, you would think about that work completely differently, it makes you feel different about it. What we need to say is this: what he did, as far as I was concerned, is that he came to do one thing or many things. We were told we were working with non-referential, abstract sculpture and the first thing he did was make this thing, the dreadful, naked clay woman. Then he made this head, this penis, and then I thought, ‘Oh, that’s quite good’. There was this feeling that if you did that, that’s what you did and you just developed it and you made a career out of it, but he wasn’t about that. He thought, ‘Oh, that’s quite good’, then he made some pinch pots, then he did stone carvings and I thought, ‘Good for you, do what you bloody well, like!’ Because, why not? You are an artist and sculptor. The written pieces, the poetry stuff, engagement with other slightly political things, very, very inspirational. J: He made film, sound pieces, action, furniture and casting in bronze. B: I was interested in all these things as well and, I think, why would you ever want to be restricted to one thing? I’m still not. It’s not what I want to do. Just try to make work as best you can. He was an inspiration in not only doing it but supporting his fellow artists to help them do it, which is absolutely crucial. He changed what happened in twentieth-century British art, he changed it. J: And, I think on that note we should end, because I agree with you!
B: I think the last thing I want to say ... one night I was having a drink with him in a pub on Savile Row, near Waddington’s, and he kept saying, ‘It’s the first furlong’. And that’s when I think he signed that first deal, and made some contractual arrangement with Leslie Waddington, and then he started making the hares. He has been vilified by people for that and I don’t get it. Some of those hares are absolutely splendid and there are some that are actually very funny. They are very interesting pieces and I think that people have been very quick to say, ‘Oh, I liked the early work, but the hares ...’ and I’m not having that! I actually have such belief in the later work because of the earlier work, in all the work, and I think people are rather quick to say, ‘It’s just this, this is just the next thing’. J: I think you put your finger on it when you said Barry wouldn’t do what was expected, right from the start when you first met him. B: Well, in 1980, no one was making bronzes. He started making bronzes and you thought, ‘What is he doing now? Oh, tut, tut, tut. Oh, no, no, no’. Some people can tut, tut, tut all they like. I wasn’t tut-tutting. I thought, ‘This is interesting’. I have never used bronze, I don’t like the stuff, not my cup of tea, but I do think he has made some extremely good pieces and I think time will tell.
[1] metal 2 ’64, 1964
[2]   o  ne ton corner piece, 1967
[3] hole in the sea (triptych), 1967 / 70
[4] U ntitled, c.1970
[5] h eap 3 ’67, 1967
[6] 4 rahsb 2 ’67, 1967
[7]   d  igital stills from sand girl, 1970
[8] g rass 1, 1967
[9] g rass 2, 1967
[10] g rass 3, 1967
[11]   Bollard, 1979
[12] U ntitled, 1979
[13] a nd then among Celts N. ’77, 1977
[14] U ntitled twice, 1973
[15] Stone carving, 1973
[16] U ntitled, 1978
[17] U ntitled, 1972
[18] U ntitled, 1979
[19] P ast and future, 1980
[20] U ntitled (1), 1983
[21] U ntitled (2), 1983
[22] U ntitled (3), 1983
[23] The Road to Altissimo, 1973
[24] U ntitled 1.05 kilos, 1980
[25] U ntitled 2.68 kilos, 1980
[26] Maquette for stone sculpture no.10 / 81, 1981
[27] Maquette for stone sculpture no.11 / 81, 1981
[28] U ntitled, 1981
[29] U ntitled, 1981
[30] U ntitled (carving no.1 / 83), 1983
[31]   Black Ad ’70, 1970 a work by the artist in the form of an advert in the magazine Studio International, October 1970, p.xix
art and artists, vol.1, no.6, September 1966
W O R K S
[1] metal 2 ’64, 1964 painted mild steel 36 × 168 × 30 in / 91.4 × 426.7 × 76.2 cm Installation at Group H exhibition, Drian Gallery, London, 4 – 28 October 1966 opposite page: metal 2 ’64 and unnamed sculpture by Barry Flanagan on roof of St Martin̓s School of Art, London, 1964 [2] o ne ton corner piece, 1967 sand, canvas 157 1̸2 × 72 in / 400 × 183 cm (variable) Installation at Five Issues of Studio International, Raven Row, London, 26 February – 3 May 2015 [3] hole in the sea (triptych), 1967 / 70 photo etching (set of three) 19 7̸8 × 23 7̸8 in / 50.5 × 60.6 cm (each) copy no.7 from an edition of 25 [4] U ntitled, c.1970 hessian, sand, wood base 13 1̸4 × 5 × 5 in / 33.6 × 12.7 × 12.7 cm [5] h eap 3 ’67, 1967 hessian, sand 18 × 30 × 30 in / 45.7 × 76.2 × 76.2 cm [6] 4 rahsb 2 ’67, 1967 hessian, sand, resin 36 × 48 × 48 in / 91.4 × 121.9 × 121.9 cm opposite page: working photograph of 4 rahsb 2 ’67 with artist’s handwritten annotations, 1967 [7] s and girl, 1970 digital stills from V HS version of original super 8 film (16:58 mins)
[8] g rass 1, 1967 photograph 23 1̸8 × 33 7̸8 in / 58.7 × 86 cm unnumbered artist’s proof from an edition of 10 plus 3 artistʼs proofs [9] g rass 2, 1967 photograph 23 1̸8 × 33 7̸8 in / 58.7 × 86 cm unnumbered artist’s proof from an edition of 10 plus 3 artistʼs proofs [10] g rass 3, 1967 photograph 23 1̸8 × 33 7̸8 in / 58.7 × 86 cm unnumbered artist’s proof from an edition of 10 plus 3 artistʼs proofs [11] Bollard, 1979 granite, pigment and ink 19 1̸4 × 13 1̸4 × 12 1̸8 in / 48.9 × 33.6 × 30.8 cm [12] U ntitled, 1979 hessian, plaster and acrylic medium 35 3̸8 × 29 1̸2 in / 90 × 75 cm [13] a nd then among Celts N. ’77, 1977 hessian, cloth, wood, string, plaster, acrylic paint and alloy 19 1̸4 × 24 3̸4 in / 49 × 63 cm [14] U ntitled twice, 1973 hessian, cloth, wood, string, plaster and acrylic paint 35 3̸8 × 43 1̸2 × 1 5̸8 in / 90 × 110.5 × 4 cm
[15] Stone carving, 1973 limestone 3 1̸2 × 11 3̸8 × 6 3̸4 in / 8.9 × 29 × 17 cm
[24] U ntitled 1.05 kilos, 1980 bronze 3 1̸2 × 4 1̸4 × 3 in / 8.9 × 10.8 × 7.6 cm
[16] U ntitled, 1978 painted sheet steel 36 5̸8 × 76 × 40 1̸8 in / 93 × 193 × 102 cm
[25] U ntitled 2.68 kilos, 1980 bronze 3 3̸8 × 6 3̸8 × 8 in / 8.6 × 16.2 × 20.3 cm
[17] U ntitled, 1972 hessian, newspaper, plaster and acrylic medium 29 5̸8 × 15 3̸4 × 4 in / 75 × 40 × 10.2 cm
[26] Maquette for stone sculpture no.10 / 81, 1981 bronze 2 1̸4 × 2 3̸4 × 3 1̸4 in / 5.7 × 7 × 8.2 cm
[18] U ntitled, 1979 sheet steel, Hammerite 5 1̸2 × 25 5̸8 × 19 1̸4 in / 13.9 × 65 × 49 cm
[27] Maquette for stone sculpture no.11 / 81, 1981 bronze 2 1̸8 × 2 3̸4 × 3 1̸4 in / 5.4 × 7 × 8.2 cm
[19] P ast and future, 1980 sheet copper (c. 1̸4 in / 6 mm thick) 3̸8 in / 12.1 × 30.5 × 16.2 cm 4 3̸4 × 12 × 6
[28] U ntitled, 1981 bronze 8 1̸2 × 6 1̸2 × 2 1̸2 in / 21.6 × 16.5 × 6.4 cm
[20] U ntitled (1), 1983 sheet copper (c. 1̸4 in / 6 mm thick) 2 1̸2 × 6 5̸8 × 3 3̸4 in / 6.5 × 17 × 9.5 cm
[29] U ntitled, 1981 marble 39 3̸8 × 29 1̸2 × 29 1̸2 in / 100 × 75 × 75 cm
[21] U ntitled (2), 1983 sheet copper (c. 1̸4 in / 6 mm thick) 4 3̸4 × 8 1̸4 × 3 7̸8 in / 12.1 × 21 × 10 cm
[30] U ntitled (carving no.1 / 83), 1983 travertine 28 1̸4 × 59 1̸2 × 30 3̸4 in / 71.8 × 151.1 × 78 cm Installation at Watlington Park, Oxfordshire, 1983
[22] U ntitled (3), 1983 sheet copper (c. 1̸4 in / 6 mm thick) 3 × 7 7̸8 × 3 7̸8 in / 7.5 × 20 × 10 cm [23] The Road to Altissimo, 1973 marble 19 1̸4 × 11 × 12 in / 49 × 27.9 × 30.5 cm
[31] Black Ad ’70, 1970 black and white print worked over with ball point pen, pencil and black transfer tape 12 3̸8 × 9 5̸8 in / 31.3 × 24.3 cm
B A R R Y
F L A N A G A N
Born 11 January 1941, Prestatyn, Wales Died 31 August 2009, Ibiza, Spain
In 1960, Barry Flanagan attended evening drawing classes in the Sculpture Department of St Martin̓s School of Art, London, taught by Anthony Caro. Three years later, in 1964, he enrolled there as a full time student, under Phillip King and visiting tutor John Latham, among others. Bruce McLean was a fellow student on the vocational sculpture course and other contemporaries included Gilbert and George, Roelof Louw and Richard Long. Flanagan graduated from St Martin̓s with a Vocational Diploma in Sculpture in 1966. From 1967 until 1971, he would go on to teach at both St Martin̓s and at Central School of Art and Crafts, London. During his student days, Flanagan frequented Better Books, on nearby Charing Cross Road. Managed by Barry Miles and concrete and sound poet Bob Cobbing, Better Books was more than a bookshop, providing an influential platform for avant-garde art forms, including radical poetry, performance and film. Flanagan attended concrete poetry events at Better Books and at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (IC A), London. In 1965, at the second international exhibition of experimental poetry at St Catherine’s College, Oxford, which included the work of Ian Hamilton Finlay, John Furnival and Henri Chopin, Flanagan delivered a silent lip-poem and he performed a finger poem for Between Poetry and Painting held at the IC A. With fellow students Alistair Jackson and Rudy Leenders, he published Silâns, which took its title from the phonetic spelling of the French word ‘silence’; his silent lippoem was reproduced in Silâns as (O for orange U for you: poem for the lips). Silâns included poems, articles and illustrations from various contributors and ran for sixteen issues between 1964 and 1965. Flanagan had aligned himself with Alfred Jarry’s philosophy of pataphysics, the ‘science of imaginary solutions’. The associated
ideas, focused on mutable forms, the juxtaposition of paradox and the absurd, metaphorical circularity and alchemical processes, shaped his concrete poetry and contributions to Silâns. In the summer of 1966, Flanagan was invited by John Latham to co-exhibit at Bangor Art Gallery, Wales. In August, together they organised ‘Still and Chew’, designing an invitation and inviting students from St Martin̓s to take part in the event; students chewed pages of American critic Clement Greenberg’s text, Art and Culture (1965), as a protest against his formalist theories and views on British art. The chewed remains were collected, fermented and later distilled and preserved, being returned to St Martin̓s library as the final act. From 9th to 11th September, Flanagan participated in the Destruction in Art Symposium, organised by Gustav Metzger and John Sharkey at Africa Centre in Covent Garden, London. Cobbing and Miles were members of the committee. Flanagan’s first solo exhibition, held at Rowan Gallery, London, opened on 5th August 1966. Gene Baro’s review of the show, titled ‘Animal, Vegetable and Mineral’, was published in the September issue of art and artists. Flanagan would show regularly at Rowan Gallery until the mid - 70s. one ton corner piece (1967), a ton of sand poured on to the gallery floor, was exhibited there for the first time in 1968. Flanagan’s approach to sculpture had strong parallels with the emergent Land Art movement in the U K, and internationally. In 1967, he placed the three - ton, sand-filled easter bag ’67 (1967) on Holywell beach in Cornwall. hole in the sea (1967 / 70), a film of the tide coming in around a Plexiglas cylinder placed in the sand, creating a ‘hole’, was made in collaboration with Gerry Schum for his seminal T V broadcast exhibition Land Art, 1969, which featured films by renowned Land Artists, Richard Long, Dennis Oppenheim, Robert Smithson, Marinus Boezem, Jan Dibbets, Walter De Maria and Michael Heizer. Flanagan
Invitation card for Barry Flanagan: Sculpture, Rowan Gallery, London, 1966
would revisit Holywell beach in 1970 and film landscape interventions a ring on holywell beach and a line on holywell beach. line and sand girl (1970), a film of sand being poured over the body of a naked woman, were projected as part of Flanagan’s installation for The New Art exhibition at the Hayward Gallery, London, in 1972. In 1969, Flanagan participated in two groundbreaking and influential group shows, Op Losse Schroeven at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam and When Attitudes Become Form, which toured to the IC A, at the end of August 1969, from Bern and Krefeld. Both exhibitions demonstrated the new and innovative directions of contemporary art practice. Flanagan’s first solo museum show opened in September 1969 at Museum Haus Lange, Krefeld. Later that month, he travelled to New York for a solo exhibition at Fischbach Gallery. He had taken with him a portfolio of work and statements by himself, Richard Long and Bruce McLean, among others, which he presented to artists, critics and curators during the show, promoting British Conceptual Art. He met Lucy Lippard, the art critic and supporter of Conceptual Art, and artists Eva Hesse, Carl Andre, Michael Heizer and Walter De Maria. A solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, in 1974, part of M o M A’s Projects series, highlighting new art and emerging artists, featured several hessian wall hangings, including Untitled twice (1973). In the 70s, Flanagan began to use stone as a primary medium and in 1978 he worked with stone imported from Sem Ghelardini’s studio in Pietrasanta, Italy, at first directly carving and later producing sculpture after clay maquettes. In 1980, Flanagan’s first exhibition at Waddington Galleries, London, would focus on the stone sculptures dating from this period. His formal relationship with the gallery had begun in 1979, but he had first come into contact with Leslie Waddington in 1976, when he provided Flanagan
with storage facilities around the corner from the gallery, having admired his work in the collection of Ted Power. In June 1977, Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, organised the first retrospective exhibition of Flanagan’s sculpture, from 1966 to 1976. In the same year, Flanagan produced his first work in sheet metal. new metal piece (1978) a fifteen-foot wide sheet metal sculpture was produced the following year with funding from the Arts Council; it was exhibited in Barry Flanagan: Sculpture 1965–1978 at the Serpentine Gallery, London. In November 1979, Flanagan began bronze casting at A& A Sculpture Casting in London and his early bronze works were exhibited at his second Waddington exhibition in 1981. In 1982, Flanagan represented Great Britain at the Venice Biennale, marking the culmination of this period with an exhibition in the British Pavilion of stone and bronze sculptures from 1973 to 1981.
easter bag ’67, Holywell beach, Cornwall, 1967 canvas, sand (approx. 10 ft high / 3 tonnes) as recorded in the artist’s logbook
ring, line and easter bag ’67 Holywell beach, Cornwall, 1967, as documented in Gerry Schum (ed.),   L A N D A RT, Hartwig Popp, Hanover, 1970
E X H I B I T I O N S
Selected Solo Exhibitions Barry Flanagan: Sculpture, Rowan Gallery, London, 5 August – 1 September 1966 Barry Flanagan: Recent Sculpture, Rowan Gallery, London, 5 – 25 April 1968 Barry Flanagan Object Sculptures, Museum Haus Lange, Krefeld, 7 September – 12 October 1969 Barry Flanagan, Fischbach Gallery, New York, 27 September – 16 October 1969 Barry Flanagan: Recent Work, Rowan Gallery, London, 10 – 30 April 1970 Barry Flanagan, Rowan Gallery, London, 2 – 29 April 1971 Homework, Rowan Gallery, London, 10 November – 7 December 1972 Barry Flanagan, Rowan Gallery, London, 13 July – 3 August 1973 Projects: Barry Flanagan, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 18 January – 3 March 1974 Coil, Pinch and Squeeze Pots, Art & Project, Amsterdam, 18 November – 6 December 1975 Light Pieces, Art & Project, Amsterdam, 2 – 31 December 1977 Barry Flanagan: Sculpture 1966 – 1976, Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, 10 June – 10 July 1977; touring to Arnolfini Gallery, Bristol, 30 July – 27 August 1977 Barry Flanagan: Sculpture 1965 –7 8, Serpentine Gallery, London, 25 November 1978 –7 January 1979 barry flanagan curl snoots, Art & Project, Amsterdam, 27 September – 20 October 1979
Barry Flanagan, Galerie Durand-Dessert, Paris, 22 March – 3 May 1980 Barry Flanagan: Sculptures in stone 1973 –1 979, Waddington Galleries, London, 10 April – 3 May 1980 Barry Flanagan, New 57 Gallery, Edinburgh, 18 August – 6 September 1980 Barry Flanagan: Sculptures in Bronze 1980 –1 981, Waddington Galleries, London, 1– 23 December 1981 Barry Flanagan: Stone and Bronze Sculptures, British Council exhibition, British Pavilion X X X X Biennale di Venezia, 13 June – 12 September 1982 Barry Flanagan: Early Works 1965 –1 982, Tate Britain, London, 27 September 2011 – 2 January 2012
Selected Group Exhibitions Between Poetry and Painting, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, 22 October – 27 November 1965 Barry Flanagan and John Latham, University College North Wales Art Festival, Bangor Art Gallery, 5 – 25 March 1966 Op Losse Schroeven, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, 15 March – 27 April 1969 When Attitudes Become Form, Kunsthalle Bern, 22 March – 27 April 1969; touring to Kaiser Wilhelm Museum, Krefeld, 10 May –1 5 June 1969; Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, 28 August – 28 September 1969 Art in Process IV, Finch College Museum of Art, New York, 11 December 1969 – 26 January 1970
Between Man and Matter: The Tenth Tokyo Biennale, Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, Tokyo, 10–30 May 1970; touring to Kyoto Municipal Art Museum, Kyoto, 6 – 28 June 1970; Aichi Prefectural Art Gallery, Nagoya, 15– 26 July 1970; Fukuoka Prefectural Cultural House, Fukuoka, 11 –1 6 August 1970
Catherine Lampert: ‘A further introduction to the work of Barry Flanagan’, Barry Flanagan: Sculpture 1965 – 78, Serpentine Gallery, London, 1978
Information, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2 July – 20 September 1970
David Brown: ‘Introduction’, Barry Flanagan, New 57 Gallery, Edinburgh, 1980
British Sculpture out of the sixties, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, 6 August – 27 September 1970
Barry Flanagan: ‘Bronze Sculptures’, Barry Flanagan: Sculptures in bronze 1980 –1 981, Waddington Galleries, London, 1981
The British Avant-Garde, New York Cultural Center, New York, 19 May – 29 August 1971
Tim Hilton: ‘Less a Slave of Other People’s Thinking ...’, and Michael Compton, ‘A Developing Practice’, Barry Flanagan: Sculpture, Venice Biennale / The British Council, London, 1982
IN NO 70, Artist Placement Group Show, Hayward Gallery, London, 2 – 23 December 1971 The New Art, Hayward Gallery, London, 17 August – 24 September 1972 Arte inglese oggi 1960 –7 6: Part 1, Palazzo Reale, Milan, February – March 1976 Made by Sculptors, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, 14 September – 5 November 1978 Occasional Pieces, Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge, 12 January – 3 February 1980 Documenta 7, Kassel, 19 June – 28 September 1982
Selected Bibliography Paul Wember: ‘Einführung zur Eröffnung der Ausstellung’, Barry Flanagan: Object Sculptures, Museum Haus Lange, Krefeld, 1969 Catherine Lampert: ‘Notes on Barry Flanagan’, Barry Flanagan: Sculpture 1966 – 1976, Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, 1977
Catherine Lampert: ‘Stone Sculptures’, Barry Flanagan: Sculptures in stone 1973 –1 979, Waddington Galleries, London, 1980
Teresa Gleadowe: Barry Flanagan: stone and bronze sculptures (exhibition broadsheet), British Pavilion, Venice Biennale / The British Council, London, 1982 Clarrie Wallis: ‘The business is in the making’, Andrew Wilson, ‘Working towards poem’, and Jo Melvin, ‘No thing to say’, Barry Flanagan: Early Works 1965 –1 982, Tate Publishing, London, 2011 Silâns 1964 –1 965, Barry Flanagan, Alistair Jackson and Rudy Leenders (eds.), facsimile edition, Jo Melvin and all Silâns contributors, Plubronze Limited, Lethaby Press, 2011
Waddington Custot Galleries would like to thank Jo Melvin and the staff at the Estate of Barry Flanagan for their advice and assistance in the organisation of this exhibition. We would also like to thank Bruce McLean for his invaluable contribution to this catalogue
B A R R Y
F L A N A G A N
A N I M A L V E G E T A B L E M I N E R A L Works 1964 – 1983
4 March – 14 May 2016 Waddington Custot Galleries 11 Cork Street London W1S 3LT Telephone +44 (0)20 7851 2200 mail@waddingtoncustot.com www.waddingtoncustot.com Monday to Friday 10 am – 6 pm Saturday 10 am – 1.30 pm Designed by Praline (Al Rodger and David Tanguy) Printed by Pureprint Centre insert: pages taken from vols.6, 11, 15, 16 of Silâns 1964–1965, Barry Flanagan, Alistair Jackson and Rudy Leenders (eds.), facsimile edition, Jo Melvin and all Silâns contributors, Plubronze Limited, Lethaby Press, 2011 Conroy Maddox review reproduced p.[50], courtesy Art Review, volume X VIII, no.15, 6 August 1966 ( formerly Arts Review) © The Estate of Barry Flanagan, London, 2016 © Waddington Custot Galleries, London, 2016 Published by Waddington Custot Galleries Co-ordinated by Clare Preston and Jessica Ramsay ISBN-978-0-9576612-7-1
Waddington Custot Galleries