Leaping Hare

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Leaping Hare on Crescent and Bell by Barry Flanagan, 1988
Broadgate Circle
Broadgate, City of London
London, January 2005

“In 1979, artist and sculptor Barry Flanagan bought a hare from his local butcher’s (his friend Peter Randall-Page thinks he may even have found it lying by the side of the road) and an art legend was born. Recreating its form became the inspiration for many of Flanagan’s long-limbed exuberant creations (he even playfully substituted a hare for Rodin’s famous The Thinker in his 1997 piece, Thinker On The Rock), which in turn became a sought-after collectors’ pieces. At Broadgate Circle, Flanagan’s gravity-defying hare energises and lifts the spirit, bounding over the narrow crescent and the weighty dome of the bell. Exuding an air of playfulness, the sculpture conveys Flanagan’s interest in mythology with the hare (long-associated with constellations, the Chinese believe the hare is the sole inhabitant of the moon) leaping over a moon crescent. While the bell dome is present – a symbol of steadfast solidity and settled communities – it’s the madcap hare who takes centre stage; a spirit of anarchy that Flanagan himself deftly encouraged, ‘People ask me all the time why I make sculptures of rabbits.’” (Leaping Hare on Crescent and Bell, Broadgate)