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Lot Essay
Nicolas Party has constructed a captivating oeuvre by investigating and reinventing the traditional tropes of painting in an effort to more fully understand and push the boundaries of the art form. A consummate example of his ability to coax gravity out of seemingly simple subjects in pastel, Still Life stands as a testament to the artist’s knowledge of art historical tradition and his need to break through its deep codification. Part of a running series throughout his career, they initially read as boisterous, colorful scenes of colorful fruit that touch upon human experience and visual culture with surprising subtlety. “I want to grab the audience directly and “lock” them in the work as long as possible,” Party explains. “When the viewer is inside the painting, my hope is that its complexity can be revealed. You stay inside it because you feel that there is still something there that you don’t see” (N. Party, quoted in J. Lee, “Interview: Nicolas Party”, BOMB, no. 152, Summer 2020). The viewer enters into Party’s works because of their pleasing palette and leaves with a better understanding of the effect that composition and visual weight have on the experience of art.
Party’s Still Life possesses an almost visible sense of weight. Though he depicts richly colored fruit in a grouping that does not stray too far from traditional arrangements throughout art history, this collection of pears, apples, and other morsels has a surprising heft. Atop a dark cerulean background, a large white orb is draped with various pieces of fruit that lean and flop around the space. A stout red apple sits atop a drooping yellow pear while a trapezoidal object looms in the back. Purple, green, orange, pink, and fluorescent yellow objects complete the scene on a pale pink ground. Intense modeling of the forms is offset by the skinny black stems protruding from each item. The artist’s use of soft pastels instead of paint allows for a richness and velvety corporeality not afforded by other media. Instead, each element is bestowed with a visual weight that speaks more to the depiction of flesh than of fruit. Annie Godfrey Larmon, writing in Artforum, noted that “his paintings of fruit and forests anthropomorphize their subjects, which are visibly susceptible to the abuses of time” (A. Godfrey Larmon, “Nicolas Party”, Artforum, December 2017). Instead of pert pears and glistening, wax-coated apples, the fruit in Party’s compositions share a tired kinship with an audience exhausted by hectic existence. At the same time, they also offer a visual respite as their fleshy presence contrasts with the razor-edged gleam of our technological world.
The still life genre has been a source of much inspiration for Party throughout his career. Through this innocuous genre, the Swiss-born artist touches upon deeper realities that resonate with a wide audience. Realized in 2020, the year of his first solo exhibition, Still Life was also created during the worldwide pandemic. It is an easy connection to see the slumped fruit and pillow-like forms of Party’s work in dialogue with the house-bound populations working from their couches as life became still. Thinking about the traditional arrangements of natural items made famous by seventeenth-century Netherlandish painters, as well as their gradual evolution into the Cubist pile-ups of Pablo Picasso and the coldly quiet compositions of Giorgio Morandi, one can sense a discrete lineage that leads to Party’s scenes. They are, as the artist has remarked: “Something alive, but with no movement” (N. Party, quoted in R. Vitorelli, “Interview Nicolas Party,” Spike Art Magazine, no. 44, Summer 2015). The wilting flowers and memento mori that were cause for rumination in the paintings of yesteryear are replaced with drooping apples that allow for a surprisingly similar meditation on life and mortality.
Party’s Still Life possesses an almost visible sense of weight. Though he depicts richly colored fruit in a grouping that does not stray too far from traditional arrangements throughout art history, this collection of pears, apples, and other morsels has a surprising heft. Atop a dark cerulean background, a large white orb is draped with various pieces of fruit that lean and flop around the space. A stout red apple sits atop a drooping yellow pear while a trapezoidal object looms in the back. Purple, green, orange, pink, and fluorescent yellow objects complete the scene on a pale pink ground. Intense modeling of the forms is offset by the skinny black stems protruding from each item. The artist’s use of soft pastels instead of paint allows for a richness and velvety corporeality not afforded by other media. Instead, each element is bestowed with a visual weight that speaks more to the depiction of flesh than of fruit. Annie Godfrey Larmon, writing in Artforum, noted that “his paintings of fruit and forests anthropomorphize their subjects, which are visibly susceptible to the abuses of time” (A. Godfrey Larmon, “Nicolas Party”, Artforum, December 2017). Instead of pert pears and glistening, wax-coated apples, the fruit in Party’s compositions share a tired kinship with an audience exhausted by hectic existence. At the same time, they also offer a visual respite as their fleshy presence contrasts with the razor-edged gleam of our technological world.
The still life genre has been a source of much inspiration for Party throughout his career. Through this innocuous genre, the Swiss-born artist touches upon deeper realities that resonate with a wide audience. Realized in 2020, the year of his first solo exhibition, Still Life was also created during the worldwide pandemic. It is an easy connection to see the slumped fruit and pillow-like forms of Party’s work in dialogue with the house-bound populations working from their couches as life became still. Thinking about the traditional arrangements of natural items made famous by seventeenth-century Netherlandish painters, as well as their gradual evolution into the Cubist pile-ups of Pablo Picasso and the coldly quiet compositions of Giorgio Morandi, one can sense a discrete lineage that leads to Party’s scenes. They are, as the artist has remarked: “Something alive, but with no movement” (N. Party, quoted in R. Vitorelli, “Interview Nicolas Party,” Spike Art Magazine, no. 44, Summer 2015). The wilting flowers and memento mori that were cause for rumination in the paintings of yesteryear are replaced with drooping apples that allow for a surprisingly similar meditation on life and mortality.