Nicholas Harding Paintings and Prints Boutwell-Draper Gallery, 19 June - 6 July

The Star Trek factor of going where no one has gone before is so deeply ingrained in the fabric of contemporary art that we tend to overlook the reason or need for a new element. Just because something has never been done before is not reason enough to justify its creation. The work has to be a necessary development of the artists’ ideas for it to be successful.

Our constant obsession with breaking from tradition has led to an atmosphere of shallow art which, with no footholds in anything but where it stands now, has more to do with transient fashion than a further understanding of life in the present. Since necessity is the mother of invention it stands to reason that when viewing something that you haven’t seen before you have to ask does this fulfill a need? Things that are new but are not the product of necessity are usually sold with a free set of steak knives outside of the art world, this enticement however does not continue within the gallery walls.

Abstract painting may be seen as an old art form, as indeed it now is, but video art comes from an even older tradition, that of filmmaking. Installation art stems from Dada or in many cases sculpture. Most forms of visual art are building on long established traditions and to call any or all of them contemporary is correct because they are still being used as a vehicle of expression in the present day. However the term contemporary is almost universally reserved for work that has the superficial glean of newness, which we now call “contemporary”. It has become a category or movement to be regarded with future hindsight in the same way we regard Cubism or Abstract Expressionism it has ceased to be a term relating to time and has become a genre.

Since computers are new to the world you would assume that computer- generated art can only be seen as new and thus contemporary. It is however only a new medium, in the same way that acrylic paint or ready- made oil paints were once new mediums, the ideas or concerns can still be traditional and often are. Innovation cannot be found in new mediums but only in new ideas.

These terms traditional and contemporary were at the forefront of my thoughts when viewing the work of Nicholas Harding. Not being a simple critic I try to base my appraisal of a body of work on more than just the aesthetic sensations needed for choosing a new sofa. Instead I look to history and ask why did the artist use these elements in this particular way? Whenever I read a review of Nicholas Harding’s work nobody ever makes mention of Auerbach. If it were not for the work of Frank Auerbach Harding would not paint in the manner he does. This statement does not just relate to the use of impasto favoured by both artists, there is also a stylistic mimicry inherent in Harding’s work. The difference, for example, between Auerbach and his teacher David Bomberg, both of whom use thick paint, is that whilst Bomberg uses impasto to describe the weight or gravity of objects so as to give more than just the surface description of subject matter, Auerbach on the other hand uses paint to show the inner workings or matter of his subjects. Man is matter and in his portraits Auerbach pushes paint all over the canvas until a semblance of the human being is achieved, not just a resemblance but their entire self. He does not get this right the first time so he piles paint on top of paint in a struggle. The end result being, I am sure, something that could not have been conceived from the start, it is intuitive, an idea that cannot be achieved through a technical process. Neither of these painters has used paint simply for the beauty of thick luscious paint, this is only a by-product of their larger concerns.

With the work of Nicholas Harding it was in his etchings that I found evidence as to the true nature of his concerns, which are to do with tonal realism. Light and shade, perspective, reflected light, in short all the concerns of a traditional landscape painter. From a distance the paintings are competent transcriptions of urban Sydney naturalistically depicted and following a long tradition of Australian landscape painting. Up close the paintings read like a sheep in wolfs clothing, the application and quality of the paint is in essence a homage to Auerbach yet it is only as a surface concern, window dressing if you like. Harding is a decent draughtsman, from his graphic work we see this. He sets the composition down and then works tonally, slowly building up the image. This technique when translated into painting seems strangely at odds with his method of application, like trying to catch a butterfly with a combine-harvester, hard to achieve and difficult to understand.

Harding is a contemporary artist because he is painting today, he is also a traditional painter because his concerns are wholly based on the ideas of earlier painters. It would seem wrong to call him a contemporary realist as that phrase has already been renovated to serve a different end, although that is the category under which his work falls, if we need a category ? Harding is not following the fashions of “Contemporary Art” which is refreshing to see, and although he has not produced any new ideas his work is of a high standard with a pleasant sense of nostalgia. His painting is capable of change and in time it may evolve into something unique as he finds his own voice.

-Richard Lamarck

back to top