Colour plus narrative – the art of Tony Harding

Associated media

Artist Tony Harding talks to Ann Bach

Mark Zuckerburg, or rather, Facebook is to be thanked for Cassone’s introduction to Tony Harding’s art. On Cassone’s Facebook page, Tony Harding commented on another artist's thread. We were struck by his wit, checked out his art and the result is this interview with Ann Bach. 

The British artist Tony Harding resides in a village in Provence where the Marquis de Sade once made his home (perhaps the subject of another interview…!) and has exhibited widely in the region. But Tony Harding was born in London in 1946. The son of a cartoonist who worked at home, as a child he spent many hours at the British Museum, National and Tate Galleries.  Although he was accepted by the London School of Art at 17, it was only after severe reprimand for having the gall to express interest in creating only non-objective art that he decided art school was not for him. 

Instead, Tony went to work in a variety of industries: film, public relations, financial journalism, advertising… and there were also a few factory jobs along the way. From his description, his early years were as devoid of colour as his current life is now full of it.

Josef Albers famously created his ‘Interactions of Color’ series (1963) consisting of concentric squares of two-colour combinations designed to show the effects of colour ‘vibrations’ and their relative effects. This related to the idea of ‘simultaneous contrast of colours’, attributed to the French scientist Michel Eugene Chevreul. Harding has gone one step further. By tweaking concentric squares to include additional elements so that the eye (perhaps) sees a horizon and (perhaps) sees a building, and titling the work, with two words, for a spot on the globe, the imagination is given free rein. Call it ‘Interaction of Color 2.0’, if you will, but with the added narrative, it is as, if not more, potent.

Works in Tony’s  'towns & cities of the world' series are produced first digitally and then converted into paintings. Within the series there are currently approximately 50 images, all created within the past few years. Harding was recently asked to identify his top ten favourites of the series. They are as follows:  Benares, India; Cahors, France; Las Vegas, USA; Teheran, Iran; Kyoto, Japan; Piraeus, Greece; Zurich, Switzerland; Heraklion, Greece; Carthage, Tunisia; Bologna, Italy.

Why are those his favourites? The answer may surprise you.

 Ann Bach: Tony, your art background is so impressive but for the purpose of this interview we've decided to focus on your beautiful Facebook album entitled 'Towns & Cities of the World.' How would you describe your art-making process?

Tony Harding: As to the form of abstraction I chose to follow it has always avoided the gestural and for want of a better term is 'geometric'.  I liked its 'anonymous' form of application whereby the personality of the artist is difficult to discern.  Such work always seemed to minimize the 'creative persona' and the theatricality which can go with it.  My paint surface has always been flat; lacking any witness to a brushstroke.  I love the idea of an 'all-over' painting where the hierarchies of parts are subordinate to the unity of the whole and if the drawing is right they can set up a visual continuum which is never resolved, which in turn undermines the notion of time.  



The series 'Towns & Cities of the World' started off as a ridiculous idea which I decided to take seriously. I use the same composition; the same format (32cms x 20cms). Some are places I've been to; most are not. Perhaps the sound of the names and an association with their history, the imagined climate, subconscious memories of images I've seen of these places led me to choose the colours I use. What is strange is that if nothing happens in the imagination in relation to a town or city there's no way I can attach colours to them. It really is as though they make themselves.  There are 40+ images in the series so far and heaven knows how many to come. 

AB: Your colourist portrayal in this series is very powerful. How many of these towns & cities have you visited?

TH: Not a single one.  At the start I did say it was a crazy idea but that was why I was attracted to it.  I intentionally posted on Facebook to see if what I personally felt to be valid could touch others and truly I was amazed by the positive response. 

AB: That's extraordinary. While some appear conventional, combinations such as Las Vegas are in a colour world of their own.

TH:  Painting is such a funny business. It has a logic which seems to work outside the rational whilst remaining reasonable and I put that down to the notion of non-verbal thought.  We are so conditioned to believe that 'thinking' uses language as its only tool that we have forgotten that perception comes from the Latin perspicio - I see through – which for me suggests the function of the artist who 'sees through' in his work and, if it is sufficiently strong, permits the spectator to also 'see through'. 

AB: You obviously have a very rich interior world. This series seems to capture it.

TH: Perhaps I am tangling thinking and perceiving too closely together but when one says 'I see' it suggests I understand so in  the use of the 'see' in that sense the verbal has ceded place to the visual.  After all this clod-hopping, clumsy thinking,  you can understand why I took up painting.

AB: And we're glad you did.