Gaiety by Harold Barling Town
Harold Town
Gaiety
oil and lucite on board
signed and dated 1960 upper left
30 x 30 ins ( 76.2 x 76.2 cms )
Auction Estimate: $20,000.00 - $25,000.00
Price Realized $21,600.00
Sale date: December 3rd 2020
Canadian Fine Arts, Toronto
Private Collection, Toronto
Gerta Moray, “Harold Town, Life & Work” [online publication], Art Canada Institute, Toronto, 2014, pages 31 and 62
Iris Nowell, “Harold Town”, Vancouver, 2014, page 103
organic shapes in candy colours was a particular strategy Town often employed to play with perspective and the flatness of the image plane. This practice would later blossom and evolve into the artist’s “Tyranny of the Corner” series of the early 1960s with a layering of ‘doughnuts’ on blue-black backgrounds. “Gaiety” serves as an excellent example of the artist’s early development of visual patterning in abstract art.
Moreover, significant attention is paid to the corners and edges of “Gaiety”, as Town experimented with the importance of compositional weight at the edges of the work, exploring the boundaries of the image plane. Town described his move away from the dominating central image, favouring the corners which, “in most paintings are like uninvited guests at a party, uneasy and unattended... I have invited the corners to come early to the party and tried, if anything, to make all the elements of the painting that arrived later a trifle uncomfortable.” Using bright bands of jagged yellow and a checkered pattern at the lower edge of the artwork- a nod to the modernist grid- the artist immediately forces the viewer’s eye to the peripheral edges of the composition and invites consideration of these spaces as equal players in the compositional layout. There is an oscillation between intention and chance in the work. The elements seemingly exist by happenstance on the image plane, but indeed were very intentionally placed by the artist to challenge our expectations of both composition and abstract painting.
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Harold Barling Town
(1924 - 1990) Painters Eleven, OSA, RCA
A lifelong Torontonian, Harold Town was one of Canada’s foremost abstract expressionists. After graduating from the Ontario College of Arts (now, OCAD University), he worked as a commercial illustrator for many years. In 1954, he became a founding member of the experimental painter’s group, Painters Eleven, a name he coined, himself, along with Jack Bush and Jock MacDonald.
Town’s work went beyond paint, though: he experimented with all kinds of different methods and materials. He often employed a lithography machine to ink his paper in different ways (his single autographic prints). A propane blow torch was occasionally used to burn his paper or canvas. And he particularly loved collage, stating, “it’s marvelous to think of the garbage of our age becoming the art of our time.” According to Gerta Moray, these collages are closely connected to his abstract expressionist painting: “the compositional modes of his collages share the aesthetic of his paintings: they spread out to fill the surface yet are given focus as configurations by areas of drawing in ink or paint.”
Two of Town’s single autographic prints were the first works by the artist to be acquired by the National Gallery of Canada. The NGC then selected him to represent Canada at the 1956 Venice Biennale, along with Jack Shadbolt and Louis Archambault.
By the end of the 1960s, Town had exhibited his work internationally and represented Canada at the Venice Biennale twice. He garnered covers of Maclean’s and Time magazines and became a hero of Canadian art. At one point his name was “synonymous with art in Toronto.” He received an honourary doctorate from York University and the Order of Canada.
In the 1970s, Town faced criticism for remaining in Toronto instead of going to New York to pursue Pop Art and minimalism. Town asserted that these claims by art critics suggested a subservience to the New York trends. He remained true to his roots in Toronto.
In the 1980s, Town returned to figurative painting. His bright colours and simple lines were playful, ironic, and influenced by folk art. In his series, Musclemen, he painted body builders in cartoonish proportions and colours, with giant muscles and tiny heads. Apparently, Town “came upon an international bodybuilding competition and was captivated by the human body performing its muscle-bulging poses as living sculpture.” Moray asserts that this series ironically comments on “the masculine ideal in popular culture.” This assertion is made more interesting when considering that he also painted a small number “Muscles Ladies.”
Four years before his death, Town was given a long overdue retrospective exhibition at the Art Gallery of Ontario. Town’s death in 1990 of cancer was felt profoundly by the artistic community. Pierre Burton wrote “Town was a great artist with an insatiable intellect.” David Burnett, the curator of his retrospective wrote: “Our response to his death must be to begin the process of understanding his achievement as a totality, of facing all of his work in the present” The enticing legacy of his work continues to captivate and intrigue audiences today.
Literature Sources
Iris Nowell, “Harold Town”, Vancouver, 2014, pages 175-78
Gerta Moray, “Harold Town: Life and Works”, Art Canada Institute, 2014 (www.aci-iac.ca/art-books/harold-town)
We extend our thanks to Scarlett Larry, York University graduate student in art history, for writing and contributing this artist biography.
