Richard Harper

Richard Harper, "Recent paintings"

Richard Harper explores limits of realist painting: he could have chosen abstraction but he preferred to devote his work to an extremely detailed objective realism.

Each of his paintings involves a long and meticulous ritual. By the multi-layering of several very thin translucent coasts of paint, Harper gives life and substance to his models; the colour of the flesh presents a most unsettling reality, sinuous, like the curves of veins… Several months or even several years are sometimes necessary to achieve one painting. This inherent time frame of production, which may seem anachronistic today, is demonstrated by the long gestation of each of his works.

Unconsciously, our eye follows the successive phases of the elaboration of his painting: posture of body, its curves, its surface and then its texture. Gradually led to a very detailed observation, we have the impression of looking through the clay of human creation. Like a zooming in from the outside to the inside of the flesh. Standing, reclined or curled up, his models declare their existence with all the distance that fits with the refusal of subjectivity lauded by the painter:

"I have chosen the human body, in its natural condition as my principle subject. For me it represents the ideal object of painting. To maintain the focus on this singular subject I have adopted a minimalist approach to my work. I have intentionally limited the subject of my paintings to this: a human body on a platform with a neutral background. Always painted life size, the body fills the space, almost reaching the sides of the canvas. It constitutes the only and the most important object of the painting."

Without clothes or accessories likely to divert our eyes, nudity enables us to focus our attention strictly on the body. A unique body, similar but different to others, anonymous but individualized. In front of these illusory presences of so perfectly re-created human forms, Richard Harper confronts us, in a certain sense, with an image of our selves. But beyond our physical reality is the question of another reality as much essential, immaterial and impenetrable. Harper leaves it to us to make our own conclusions about our physicality and its relationship to this indescribable attribute which exists or not in ourselves…

Biography

Born in 1951 in California (U.S.A.), Richard Harper studied at the Los Angeles Art Center College of Design where he was graduated in 1975. After having lived in California, he moved to France in 1986.

Comments

[boops]

Je ne vois pas des corps humains, je vois des corps de femmes, belles, bien proportionnées, minces... ... soyons sérieux. S'il s'agissait d'interroger le corps humain, il aurait fallu aller piocher dans toutes les formes humaines ... !