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Overview

Barry Flanagan explored painting, dance, and installation work as alternatives to the constructed metal sculptures that were the prevalent idiom when he was in art school in London in the 1960s. His inventive and varied body of work is filled with humor and poetic associations, often evoked by the particular organic materials he employed. While working with clay in the early 1980s, Flanagan perceived the image of a hare "unveiling" itself before him. The hare motif has appeared in a variety of guises in Flanagan's bronzes. In Thinker on a Rock the artist substitutes the hare for Rodin's Thinker (1880), making an irreverent reference to one of the world's best-known sculptures, a version of which may be seen in the West Building sculpture galleries.

Inscription

on top of proper right side of base, "AB" in monogram with "London" in semi-circle below monogram: fo 2/5 AB LONDON

Provenance

(Richard Gray, New York and Chicago); purchased 1999 for NGA by Mr. and Mrs. John Pappajohn, Des Moines, Iowa.

Bibliography

2013
Cigola, Francesca. Art Parks: A Tour of America’s Sculpture Parks and Gardens. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2013: 101.

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