His Master’s Voice

Catalogue entry

This catalogue entry discusses a group of works; details of the individual work are given at the end of the introductory text.

Barry Flanagan born 1941

P02723 - P02834 Group of 112 etchings and linocuts, various sizes. Presented by the artist’s former wife Sue Flanagan 1985

This group of prints represents nearly the entire printed output of the artist up to 1983 and is one of the largest public collections of his prints. The titles were all given by the artist. Those prints bearing the stamped monogram ‘f’ were stamped by the Tate Gallery at the artist’s request.

The artist has said that print-making represents for him a ‘traditional pursuit’. Flanagan began to make prints in 1970. His prints (and drawings) often have a very personal content and can be seen as akin to private memoranda. Sometimes used as gifts for friends, they record aspects of the artist’s personal life. He first published prints with the Rowan Gallery in 1972, a year in which his print-making was prolific. Thereafter he published series of prints with Bernard Jacobson Gallery in 1976 and Waddington Graphics in 1983.

In 1981 Flanagan exhibited a comprehensive range of his prints and drawings at the Mostyn Art Gallery, Llandudno. The exhibition travelled to Mold, Cardiff, Swansea, Southampton and London and then, in 1983, toured in Italy, France and Holland. In the early 1980s Colin Dyer, working with the artist in his studio, completed archival sets of prints using cream Vélin d’Arches paper. Those etchings in the Sue Flanagan donation printed on white paper are generally those which the artist printed at Petersburg Press, at Burleighfield Press (with David Harding) or in his own studio in the early and mid 1970s.

Many of the prints have a small dark rectangle at one of their edges which results from the etching process. David Brown explains:

In the preparation of etching plates, they are ‘smoked’ in a flame to produce a fine, even covering of wax, the plate being held by a pair of tongs and therefore unaffected by the ‘smoking’ process would be waxed later, but with these prints, Flanagan chose to eliminate this final stage leaving a small area etched by acid and absorbing the ink (Barry Flanagan: Etchings and Linocuts, exh. cat., Waddington Graphics 1984, [p.3]).

So characteristic of Flanagan’s etchings is this black mark, it can almost be seen as a second ‘signature’.

These entries are based on conversations with Sue Flanagan and Colin Dyer and have been approved by the artist.

P02791 His Master's Voice 1973

Etching 209 x 245 (8 1/4 x 9 5/8) on paper 377 x 442 (14 3/4 x 17 3/8); plate-mark 209 x 245 (8 1/4 x 9 5/8); printed by the artist; not editioned
Inscribed on back ‘Vox' b.1.; printed inscription ‘Feb 73' bottom centre of image; stamped with the artist's monogram ‘f' below image b.r.

The image of this print echoes the trade mark of the H.M.V. record company. Derived from a painting by Francis Barraud of c.1898 entitled ‘His Masters Voice', this trade mark shows a dog sitting next to an old-style gramophone player with a trumpet, seemingly listening to a record. In P02791 Flanagan has drawn a similar, but by no means identical, dog sitting next to and looking attentively at the back of a square stretcher. From a gaping hole in the material stretched over the frame droops a strip that has been cut out from the centre of the canvas. This part of the image of the print is a close, if back-to-front, depiction of Flanagan's stretched hessian or flax works of the early 1970s. ‘Untitled II' 1972, repr. Barry Flanagan Sculpture, exh. cat., British Pavilion, XXXX Biennale, Venice 1982, p.23) for example, has a thin strip of hessian cut in a spiral from the centre of the square, curling down in front of the work. In alluding to the H.M.V. trade mark in the title of this print Flanagan suggests that in a sense the art work on the right of the image is his ‘voice'.

For other images of dogs in prints by Flanagan see P02740, P02745, P02760, P02829 and P02831.

Published in:
The Tate Gallery 1984-86: Illustrated Catalogue of Acquisitions Including Supplement to Catalogue of Acquisitions 1982-84, Tate Gallery, London 1988, pp.333 and 348-9

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