John Hart’s rendering of folded and crumpled material brings to mind the classical masters as well as the venerated tradition of still-life painting. PRUE GIBSON explores its appeal.

The soft curves and elegant folds of conventional drapery suggest the female form. In Classical Greek and Roman art, the sculptor’s skill was in part measured by his technical facility in carving falling folds of clothing. Renaissance fresco painting, less formalist and rigid, still included the draped apparel of the subject as a compositional device and by the Baroque period, robust and risqué boys in falling-off, unironed white shirts (by the likes of Caravaggio) or crumpled cloths on tables loaded with rotting fruit were testing the artists’ skills.

John Hart, a Broken Hill-based artist and the manager of the Pro Hart Gallery, extends this interest in the aesthetic values and challenges of drapery in his recent body of work, Through a glass darkly. The first element to set Hart apart from his drapery predecessors is his choice of fabric — plain white cotton rather than extravagant silks or linens. The second element is the way he arranges his drapery scenes, lights them, photographs, Photoshops and finally paints them. The third element is the way the sheets are slung over an invisible wire. They hang in folds, repeatedly wound over or twisted into loose knots. Do they form a washing line, a kid’s ‘pretend’ theatre stage, a crumpled bed?

To read more of this item and others, subscribe now (you will receive the latest issue) or simply order Issue 23 of aAR by clicking here.

Image: John Hart, Composition 68, oil on canvas, 92 x 92cm.