Canadian Art Magazine, Spring 2005

Harold Klunder
By Randall Anderson

	Harold Klunder "The Listener", Oil on Canvas, 2004, 32 x 32 in. Harold Klunder makes paintings. They aren't designed, rationalized or discussd beforehand but rather built through engagement with a process of work. The skill Klunder has gained from years of grappling with painting's history and the accumulated facts of his own production comes to bear on every decision, but, in the end, each brush stroke only exists in relation to every other; nothing is predetermined. There are no failures, just shifts in direction. It's a fluid process of building surfaces, conversing with colour and form and managing the potential for dissent. I visited Klunder's studio several times as the works in this exhibition came together and saw layers come and go as the paintings progressed. They struck me as strangely unrelated to the history of Canadian painting, which is deeply steeped in landscape and formalist abstraction. The closer link is with the short-lived British art movement that Ezra Pound called vorticism, which emerged just before the First World War and stylistically combined Cubism and Futurism. Within its milieu was David Bomberg, who later became a member of the London Group, which influenced a younger generation of painters that includes Frank Auerbach and Leon Kossoff. Like the works of Kossoff and Auerbach, Klunder's paintings are thick surfaces of encrusted oil paint rooted in the world around them. They show figures, faces and the corners of the studios they were made in, classic subjects out of which the artists wrest content from the grip of the ordinary. Klunder's painting "The Listener" has references to a classic portrait head, but it shifts and morphs as your eyes move across the surface. He plays visual games, providing clues unitl we get trapped in the surface, enjoying the paint. Looking isn't a matter of seeing a picture, but sensing an object. The surface presents a visceral body relationship that extends beyond rational knowing. There is a sensation that the paint is for your eyes alone, and nothing else matters. Rereading John Berger's novel "A Painter of our Time" I wanted to believe that the protagonist, Janos Lavin, makes paintings like Harold Klunder - paintings with an urgency that earns them their place in the world. It's a romantic notion, but in an age of political and environmental uncertainty, what's wrong with a little romance?

Terms and Conditions of Use | Privacy Policy