Harold Bruder Paintings from: 1960's | 1970's | 1980's | 1990's | 2000's | 2010's
Paintings Vault Series 1978 - 1982
Home Resume Statement Reviews Contact Blurbs below from Ralph Pomeroy’s 1984 ARTS article for Vault Series
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Roman Space ---80”x 93” 1978--- “Roman Space, the first of the series to be painted, is monochromatic, a symphony of white and beige. It is like some sort of soft architecture. We know these are draperies but there is a powerful sculptural quality about them like the low-relief on a Roman sarcophagus. …The light is even, daytime – sane, serious, clear, grave. There is a monumental feeling. This could be a god’s toga. A scythe-like movement swings through the center of the composition.”
Roman Space ---80”x 93” 1978--- “Roman Space, the first of the series to be painted, is monochromatic, a symphony of white and beige. It is like some sort of soft architecture. We know these are draperies but there is a powerful sculptural quality about them like the low-relief on a Roman sarcophagus. …The light is even, daytime – sane, serious, clear, grave. There is a monumental feeling. This could be a god’s toga. A scythe-like movement swings through the center of the composition.”
Venetian Interior ---80”x 93” 1978 --- “Venetian Interior…is a journey through reds, rose, plum, grape, prune, as rich and extravagant as roses, as heady as a great Burgundy wine. It is so gorgeous that it has a sexual pange to it, and could be sung by a famous diva if a painting was singable. A fire-like twist of reds dominates the center, almost quartering the composition. You can almost smell, almost taste the richness of it like an outrageous dessert.”
Apollo’s Light ---80”x 93” 1979 --- “The most dimensional painting of this amazing series is entitled Apollo’s Light. It was originally called Overflow and I can see why. There is a powerful projection in the folds that recalls the strong thrust of Christ’s feet in Mantegna’s painting of the dead Saviour. The folds overhang one another like cliffs – you can almost climb them. The light is brilliant and fixed as though thrown through shutters – noonday light—a perfection of gold, lemon, tangerine, counter-pointed by enhancing grays. No wonder Bruder realized the necessity of retotling it: in it the sun god smiles.”
Angle Slice ---80”x 87” 1980 --- “Angle Slice could be subtitled “The Sheets of Venus”. It is very sexy with suggestions of disordered bed clothes and “feminine” color: ice blues, beiges, lavenders, tans. I think of Boucher and of the gowns in Gainsborough portraits. But this is like satin rock. There is a hint of strata here, of wrinkled terra, of frozen particles drawn into design as though metal sucked toward a magnet. There are two sources of light: an intrusion of yellow at the left and a surprise of Bellini blue near the lower right corner.”
Royal Lime ---80”x 93” 1981 --- “Veronese is an even greater influence. His genius for diagonal composition is deeply apparent in Bruder’s Royal Lime…Perhaps the blues (Prussian and ultramarine) and the greens (lime, forest, olive, blue-green) of Bruder’s painting were also influenced by Veronese’s blue and green theme. But Bruder has introduced shock in the form of a shard of red which pirces into the very center of the composition where a faint pinwheel motion makes itself felt. This is a painting of less reflective surfaces, color saturated light. The effect is that of grandeur, staginess, an operatic extravagance. It is a spectacular work, swoon-beautiful in impact.”
Overview ---80”x 93” 1982 --- “Overview transmits an overwhelming sense of clouds, sunset or moonlight, sky and sea. Starting with a triangular orange area at the upper right-hand corner, the folds slide and swoop downward through lovely variations of yellow, lavender, and pink to a “line” of purple and blue, subsiding to pale blue along the bottom…Much is made of light hitting the folds from below, like footlights; the tight and loose pull of the material; the reflected color, creating painterly theatrics. There is a splendid sense of airiness and space, atmosphere, and a powerful tactility with the nature of cloth wonderfully realized. Here are combinations of silk and satin, cotton and velvet, the heavy and the light, the opaque and the transparent.”
Wood 7
Wood 8