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• Auction House:
  Mossgreen-Webb's
• Sale Name:
  The Peter Jarvis & Helene Phillips Collection
• Sale Date:
  30 Nov 2017 ~ 6.30pm (New Zealand Daylight Time)
• Lot #:
  31
• Lot Description:
  Pat Hanly
  In the Void (Molecular Aspect)
  enamel on board, 1969
  1205mm x 1190mm
  signed Hanly and dated '69 in enamel upper right; inscribed IN THE VOID (Molecular Aspect.) in ink verso, inscribed HANLY on original typeset label affixed verso and inscribed "For Jim Greig" in ink verso
  NOTE: Comissioned by the late Jim Greig who was a personal friend of the artist. Rhondda Greig states that this work "added a great visual excitement to our early creative life together and our first home" - Rhondda Greig (wife of the late James Greig.)
• Provenance:
  Originally in the collection of ceramic artist James (Jim) and Rhondda Greig.
• Notes:
  ESSAY: Two big influences upon Hanly’s early painting were Henri Matisse and Jackson Pollock. Hanly absorbed and transmuted their styles, developing them in ever-more-original ways in a strongly antipodean context. In the Void is one of those transmutations. Matisse’s cut-out outlines and bold colours are combined with Pollock’s dribbles and drips. The Molecular Aspect and Inside the Garden series of 1968–69 were closely related and both made use of drip and spatter techniques. Some works in the series were figurative and some, like this one, focused on the energy to be found in growing plants. Clumps of growth in the garden are shown as if scanned and magnified. The large, prominent, blue form within the composition takes on the appearance of a crested, pecking bird. This treatment is similar conceptually to the cut-out sections in Pollock’s Out of the Web, 1949, where the artist cut through the drip-covered canvas to expose the brown, glue-stained Masonite beneath. The presence of the cut-out form within In the Void disrupts what was already an adventurous rendering of a garden. Hanly has painted in ragged edges to the various sections of the work, to give the effect of a collage of fragments, presenting simultaneously the sky above and the garden below. The blue area is filled with what could be vast clumps of galaxies seen from millions of light years away. Presenting both the macrocosm and the microcosm. Although all the paintings in this series were frontal presentations of gardens or figures, it is possible to read this particular painting as a satellite view of a bay with two estuaries. A peninsula angles in from the top left and the yellow areas represent built-up zones. It is relevant in this context to note Hanly’s ‘schema for future work’, drawn up in 1967 and quoted in Russell Haley’s book on the artist: “Do not make pictures anymore! Make statements of your thinking (physics, compassionate, philosophical) on the nature of things.” Warwick Brown
• Estimate:
  NZ$50,000 - 70,000
• Realised Price:
  *****
  

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• Category:
  Art

This Sale has been held and this item is no longer available. Details are provided for information purposes only.