Page 42 - Studio International - October 1969

Sculpture made visible

Barry Flanagan
in discussion with

Gene Baro

GENE BARO: What led you to sculpture in
particular among the visual arts?
BARRY FLANAGAN: The convention of painting
always bothered me. There always seemed to
be a way of painting. With sculpture, you
seemed to be working directly, with materials
and with the physical world, inventing your
own organizations.
GB: But sculpture is a conventional art no less
than painting. How do you reconcile yourself
to the traditions and conventions of sculpture?
BF: I don't. There is a sculptural way of
working that relates to the history of art -in the
linear sense. For instance, I sometimes use
canvas; I can put a canvas on a wall as a
sculptural object in such a way that it will
relate to the whole history and convention of
painting through its rectangularity and flat
vertical surface. But when I make a two- or
three-space rope sculpture, it doesn't relate to
any conventional or semantic tradition in art.
GB: This raises the question of your choice of
sculptural materials. There are traditional
materials-stone and bronze. What was it that
led you to use such unconventional materials
as cloth, rope, and sand?
BF: Those materials-cloth, rope, and sand-
would seem unconventional only to those who
are bound by the notion of a tradition. What I
like to do is to make visual and material
inventions and propositions. I don't think
about making sculpture, and I don't think
whether or not what I'm making is sculpture.
I don't like the idea of inventing a rationale to
accompany the work. The tradition is only a
collection of rationales.
GB: It seems as if your work is centred upon
experience, is a kind of speculation upon what
you experience visually and physically. Does
this strike you as a just assumption? Or how
would you differ from it?
BF: My work isn't centred in experience. The
making of it is itself the experience. to be seen, both natural and man-made, that
Rope 3'66 1966
Gs: How, then, do you begin a sculpture? have visual strength but no object or function 12 x 40 x 44 in. Sisal rope
BF: Truly, sculpture is always going on. With apart from this. It is as if they existed for just 2
Rings '66 1966
proper physical circumstances and the visual this physical, visual purpose-to be seen. Sand
invitation, one simply joins in and makes the GB: This is perhaps not so different from Henry 3
work. Moore's discovering sculpture in blocks of Glass 1'66 1966
GB: Are you saying that sculpture exists in stone or sections of wood. Size by arrangement. Glass
nature to be discovered ? BF: Moore had to invent the shape in his 4
2-space rope sculpture (Gr 2 Sp 60) 1967
BF: Not exactly. When I say that sculpture is imagination-to put it another way, to invent 60 ft x 6 in. girth. Rope
always going on, I mean that there is a never- the exactness of the shape in his imagination 5
Al cash 4'67 1967
ending stream of materials and configurations 32 x 36 x 36 in. Sand and canvas