Page 52 - Studio International - May 1968

Bundle 1967 hessian, paper, 2 ft x 3 ft x 2 ft 6 in. Rack 1967-8 hessian, polystyrene chips and metal tube
2 ft 4 in. x 10 ft x 4 ft 6 in. (7 ft girth)

the problem I ran into it.' If there are still traces of a literary attitude sculptural existence. One piece was recently stabbed to death by
in his sculpture, they grow less with each phase of work. vandals at an exhibition in Hampstead; another, erected on a beach
The progress of Flanagan's explorations and rejections has been at in Cornwall, was pushed over by soldiers; Flanagan's exhibit at the
once irrational and systematic. The three pieces exhibited at the Paris Biennale took a beating at the hands of the French. It is
Biennale des Jeunes in Paris2 seemed to me principally involved with impossible to avoid attributing life of some kind to these sculptures,
extension horizontally. The present series explores the concept of and because they are human artefacts it is impossible not to relate
vertical arrangement: forms heaped on the floor, bunched in a rack, that life to human life. By a paradox which is both hilarious and
stacked in order, hanging from a line, or folded in a pile. Related to painful, Flanagan uses sculptural means to show what it feels like to
these sculptures and what they do, the words of their titles are re- be human. We use the verb 'to feel' in both an active and a passive
invested with significance as evocative labels for a certain kind of sense: to touch or to experience. The mystery of these sculptures is
physical behaviour. For the first caveman to make the noise 'Food', embodied in the ambiguities of grammatical mood. We touch and
the word must have embodied a passion which we literates can never are touched, move and are moved. The faculty of touch—of physical
match, however hungry. The concept 'Heap', as demonstrated by sensation— and the ability to move— to change our perception of the
Flanagan, takes on the fascination of a new recognition. I look at all work by changing our physical position relative to it—are the two
heaps with a new interest, as if with an intuitive understanding of human activities which are peculiarly relevant to the experience of
something I had always taken for granted: what it feels like to be sculpture. Sculpture, when it is reduced to its essential ingredients,
operated upon by gravity. is something we can move relative to, and something we can touch.
Besides this refurbishing of related experiences, there is offered Only when it is primarily this can it be secondarily something more.
another category of sculptural experience which comes new to us, Only, that is to say, when they have evoked sculptural form can the
the result of the particular character given to his forms by the sculp- sculptor's sensations be embodied. Experience cannot be developed
tor. The bulge and sag of the hessian bags under pressure of the sand sculpturally without loss of concentration; the experience must be a
they contain; the different thicknesses along their lengths (their sculptural experience in the first place. If I ask the question, 'What
tailoring is very precisely controlled) ; their intermingling and inter- does it mean?', I'm limiting the possible range of answers over just
weaving, emphasized by the use of colour (yellow, green and purple that area where Flanagan has worked to extend his sculpture.
in Heap); all these act upon us to create a particular sensation. `Meaning' is a linguistic not a sculptural concept. If I ask myself
If one bag is thick, another is thinner in relation, and the perception instead, 'What is embodied in these forms?', I am open to the kind
of this difference is a particular ingredient in our experience of the of intuitive experience that only sculpture can provide. In his exposi-
sculpture. Several of Flanagan's sculptures are light in mood. With tion of sculpture as a medium, Barry Flanagan is determinedly
Heap I cannot avoid a sensation of pathos and of gravity (the verbal honest without being priggish; and in his embodying of experience
double meaning is a fair equivalent for the two complementary through sculpture he is deeply serious without being pompous.
sculptural approaches). This sensation is evoked sculpturally and Humour, but no tricks. Passion, but no rhetoric. q
abstractly. The inertia of the heap in relation to the attenuation of its
components creates tension. This tension evokes in me a response
1 Silas, edited at St Martins by Barry Flanagan, Alistair Jackson and Rudy
which is impossible to define, but which I associate with feelings of Leenders. Sixteen issues September 1964—June 1965. The quotation is from
pain and loss. I am not sure that my own specific emotion is relevant No. 6.
to the intention of the sculpture; but I am sure that that intention is 2 See Studio International September 1967, where these works are illustrated in
deeply serious. colour. A blue linoleum ring seemed as near as it was possible to get to a
one-plane sculpture, identifiable as sculpture rather than painting by the
Many of Flanagan's sculptures express human vulnerability, not, as
fact that that one plane was the floor rather than the wall; a 60-foot green
in the work of a sculptor like Roland Piché, by recalling human forms rope made a lateral exploration of the floor plane; and four sand-filled canvas
and human events, but by exhibiting vulnerability as a factor of their pillars, spaced well apart, defined a perimeter upon it.
268