Charley Harper’s art is fantastic. To me, it’s the perfect mix of precision and modernism. He can boil down a bird’s body to a perfect minimalist shape, and use true-blue bird colors to bring it to life. This Charley Harper quote sums it up- "I never count the feathers in the wings — I just count the wings." It’s the kind of work that makes one think, “it’s so easy I could do that”- which is what people say when they see a professional baseball player swing a bat and hit a home run.
I’m hoping to get a print or two of his for Christmas as well. It’s quite possibly the greediest I’ve ever been, but with images like these, and names like, “The Family Owlbum” the man is hitting me in the sweet spot.
I also love these paintings… another theme of his it seems. Modern shapes, painted from an off kilter vantage point that makes the viewer go back to the title of the painting for clues to figure out what he/she is looking at. This is The Last Aphid.
Charley Harper and Todd Oldham started collaborating on fabrics and home furnishings before he died on June 10th of this year at the age of 85. I thought I heard Lazy Boy was going to come out with some of these collaborations? Sounds like a recliner for maxin… I’ll add it to the Xmas list for 2008. Dwell Magazine had a nice interview with the man a while back.
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