Bob Flanagan (performance artist)

On January 4, 1996, Flanagan died from complications of cystic fibrosis at 43. He was survived by his wife and close artistic collaborator Sheree Rose.

In 1996, Flanagan received the Steve Maidhof Award for National or International Work from the National Leather Association International.

In 1993, Flanagan appeared in the video for the Danzig song "It's Coming Down". In the uncensored version of the video (near the ending), Flanagan pierces his upper and lower lips together and then he hammers a nail through the head of his penis before bleeding on the lens of the camera recording him.

Visiting Hours, first shown at the Santa Monica Museum of Art in 1992, combined text, video, and live performance, and explored the convergence of illness and SM. It was Flanagan's most widely toured museum exhibition. In the center of the gallery, Flanagan lay in a hospital bed and interacted with museum visitors for the duration of the exhibit. According to curator Laura Trippi, "The installation is designed like a crazy stage set of a children's residential hospital, replete with a torture chamber lurking amidst the institutional cheer."

Flanagan met Sheree Rose in 1980, and collaborated closely with her for the rest of his life. Through the 1980s, Flanagan and Rose focused on BDSM community education and organizing, and were founding members of the Los Angeles chapter of the Society of Janus. Their work in performance art began with the 1989 piece Nailed, presented in conjunction with the release of the RE/Search publication Modern Primitives. In Nailed, Flanagan nailed his penis and scrotum to a board while singing "If I Had a Hammer."

Flanagan graduated from Costa Mesa High School, and studied literature at California State University, Long Beach and the University of California, Irvine. He moved to Los Angeles in 1976.

Flanagan began reading his poems around Southern California in the mid-1970s, and was part of the poetry community at Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Center. He published his first book, The Kid is the Man, with Bombshelter Press in 1978.

Bob Flanagan (December 26, 1952 – January 4, 1996) was an American performance artist and writer known for his work on sadomasochism and lifelong struggle with cystic fibrosis.

Flanagan was born in New York City on December 26, 1952 and grew up in Costa Mesa, California, with his mother, Kathy; father, Robert; brothers John and Tim; and sister, Patricia. In childhood, Flanagan was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis. His sister, Patricia, died at age 21 of the same illness, which also claimed the life of second sister, who died soon after birth. At age 14, in 1967, Flanagan was named the first poster child for the North Orange County chapter of the National Cystic Fibrosis Research Foundation.