John Flanagan

John Flanagan , 1865-1952, American sculptor and medalist. In 1932 he designed the George Washington silver quarter. In addition to medals and plaquettes, he produced larger works, including a clock for the Library of Congress and the Bulkeley Memorial, Aetna Life Insurance Building, Hartford, Conn.

John (1167–1216), king of England (1199–1216). John was the youngest son of Henry II; in 1177 Henry designated him lord of Ireland, with the intention of raising him to royal status. A crown for Ireland was subsequently sought from the papacy and delivered to England by papal legates around Christmas 1185. However, Henry, about to depart for Normandy, deemed the time inopportune and it was not used. In March 1185 Henry had supplied John with a personal household of experienced administrators and dispatched him to assume the lordship of Ireland in person. John alienated those Irish kings who had been prepared to enter into a personal association with him and signally failed to assert control over the principal Anglo‐Norman landholder, Hugh de Lacy. Plans to send John back to Ireland were abandoned following de Lacy's assassination.

During the reign of Richard I (1189–99), John's private household was responsible for those areas of Ireland under Anglo‐Norman control, apart from a brief period in 1194 during John's rebellion against his brother, when Richard assumed direct responsibility for Ireland. In 1199, on John's accession as king of England, Anglo‐Norman Ireland was attached to the royal government, resulting in the elaboration of English administrative structures, including the establishment of an exchequer at Dublin. In 1210 John mounted a second expedition to Ireland. The outcome was markedly different from that of his earlier visit. Walter de Lacy and Hugh de Lacy were deprived of their lordships of Meath and Ulster, while William de Braose lost Limerick, and William Marshal was obliged to accept a diminution of his liberties as lord of Leinster. Much of this enhancement of royal control was to be compromised by the baronial revolt in England from 1212 which allowed the Anglo‐Norman barons in Ireland to negotiate a series of restorations and privileges. The favourable position they thus attained is exemplifed by the appointment of William Marshal as regent for John's successor, the young King Henry III.

Marie Therese Flanagan

Latham, John (1921– ). British experimental artist, born in Northern Rhodesia. After serving in the Royal Navy in the Second Wold War, he studied at Chelsea School of Art, 1946–50. Latham is best known for work in which he uses books as raw material. In 1958 he began making ‘skoob’ (‘books’ spelt backwards) reliefs, and in the 1960s he was involved in Happenings that he called Skoob Tower Ceremonies, in which sculptures made of piles of books were ritually burned—'to put the proposition into mind that perhaps the cultural base has been burned out'. His most famous gesture came in 1966, when—as a part-time lecturer at St Martin's School of Art—he took a copy of Clement Greenberg's Art and Culture from the library and with the sculptor Barry Flanagan ‘invited artists, students and critics to Latham's house in order to take a page from this book, chew it and, if necessary, spit out the remains into a flask. The chewed pages were then immersed in acid until the solution was converted into a kind of sugar … Almost a year later Latham, in response to an urgent request for the book's return, sent back the solution together with a distilling apparatus. A few days later his teaching at St Martin's was abruptly terminated’ ( Frances Spalding, British Art since 1900, 1986). The ‘sculpture’ created by the chewed pages—entitled Art and Culture—was bought by the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1970.