In Barry Flanagan’s bronze sculpture ‘Jackass and Elephant’, two animals are brought together in an apparition that is at once playful and unsettling. Perched upon the back of an elephant sits a donkey, slightly off balance and yet surprisingly assured. The sculpture, standing almost two metres high, derives its vitality from this interplay of weight and movement. Compositionally, it is governed by a delicate vertical equilibrium. The massive body of the elephant forms a stable foundation, while the donkey above creates a dynamic counter-movement charged with tension. Flanagan leaves the surface rough and open. Indentations, fractures and visible traces of modelling recall that the form here has not been smoothed into perfection, but developed through process. It is precisely in this that his departure from the strict language of post-war modernism becomes apparent. Rather than flawless perfection, he is interested in process, experimentation and the provisional. Since the 1960s, Flanagan expanded the possibilities of sculpture through unusual materials and a new freedom in the treatment of volume and space. ‘Jackass and Elephant’, too, unites humour with sculptural precision.

Chromatic condensation

While many of his contemporaries regarded pure abstraction as the only truly modern form of expression, Nicolas de Staël demonstrates in ‘Gentilly’ that the visible world can be experienced anew through the lens of abstraction. A chromatic condensation of the visual experience, it conveys the calm and expansiveness of the landscape and reveals de Staël’s unique ability to construct light and space solely through the physical presence of colour.