Delving into the world of Nicolas Party, one encounters an artistic universe that beguiles and captivates the senses, a realm that transcends the mundane and ventures into the sublime. This virtuoso of contemporary art, gifted with an exceptional visual acumen, weaves a tapestry of chromatic reveries that dance upon the canvas like notes of an arcane symphony, beckoning the viewer into a cosmos that oscillates between the familiar and the otherworldly.

 

Born in 1980 in Lausanne, Switzerland, Party fluently expresses how the landscape of his birthplace has significantly influenced his artistic practice and approach to form. From the enduring, rough grandeur of the Alps to the polished surfaces of Lausanne's walls that he and his friends graffitied during their teenage years, this foundational environment underpins Party’s landscapes and their transformation of the perceptible into symbolic shapes.

 

Emerging from his initial forays into graffiti, Party cultivated a sharp awareness of compositional efficiency and the emotional impact that unadulterated connections between colour and form could generate on a painting's surface using the appropriate materials. As he clarifies, ‘The super-bright colours, the very clear lines and effective shapes, these are all things you do with graffiti.’ ⁱ

 

 

 “While I was doing the graffiti, I was actually still doing a lot of fairly traditional landscape painting. That environment is quite picturesque, but it got complicated with the police for a time […] Doing murals right now, it’s similar in that it’s a very physical environment and there is a time constraint—I was really chasing that sort of performance aspect.”
— Nicolas Party

 

Steeped in the rich tradition of art history, Party's oeuvre pays homage to the masters who preceded him while simultaneously forging a singular path within the contemporary landscape. Through his masterful manipulation of form, colour, and composition, Party cultivates a space where the natural world merges with the fantastical, inviting the viewer to embark upon a journey of discovery and introspection as he celebrates and challenges conventions of representational painting.

 

 

 

The present work exhibited at Nicolas Party’s recent exhibition at Montreal Museum of Fine Arts
(February – October 2022)

 

 

A Penchant for Pastels

 

Party selects soft pastel as his favoured medium—a somewhat unusual choice for a 21st Century artist which accounts for the majority of his output—allowing him to articulate his artistic vision with grace and precision.

 

Prized for its brilliant colour, although soft pastel was first used in the sixteenth century, notably by Leonardo da Vinci, it flourished in the eighteenth century in France before being revived in the late nineteenth century by artists like Degas, Bonnard and Cassatt. Commenting on the medium, Party notes, ‘it’s a very different way to work with colours. If you work with paint, you kind of imagine a colour or you work with a colour while you’re doing it. You have to make it to see it. In pastel, it’s right there.’ ⁱⁱ

 

Party's intrigue with pastels was sparked upon beholding Pablo Picasso's 1921 work, Tête de femme, wherein he marvelled at Picasso's expert translation of the fluid, voluptuous essence of Greco-Roman marble statuary into a skilful pastel rendering on paper.

 

 

 

The present work eloquently showcases the distinctive attributes of pastel's supple pigment and Party's adept application, as he simultaneously celebrates classic conventions while also shakes up viewer expectations and pushes boundaries within the genre itself.

 

In this composition, pastels serve as a conduit for the seamless geometric portrayal of trees, while concurrently facilitating the meticulous execution of details within the grassy backdrop. The matte texture gives rise to a vibrant, saturated surface that communicates three-dimensionality through gentle nuance, a hallmark of Party's oeuvre. Employing his fingertips to apply the delicate chalk material, Party finds himself captivated by the immediate and lively qualities inherent in the powdery pastel pigment. Describing his pastel process, Party says: ‘you can layer and layer, but you can’t start over. The nature of the medium is much more direct. Nothing dries or is wet – it stays exactly how it is.’ ⁱⁱⁱ

 

Moreover, the immediacy and responsiveness of pastel as a medium align with Party's artistic practice. The direct contact between the artist's hand and the pigment creates an intimate and organic connection to the artwork, allowing Party to imbue his pieces with a distinct sense of dynamism. This energy engenders an inherent versatility that complements the detached fantasy in Trees, while facilitating the achievement a wide spectrum of vibrant colours and richly saturated tones, and ultimately, granting the work emotional depth.

 

 

Let’s Get this Party Started

 

Palette is paramount for Party, bestowing a conduit for his exploration of form, emotion, and the human experience. His chromatic choices contribute significantly to the evocative nature of his compositions as they intertwine with his artistic vision to create compelling visual experiences. As such, colour serves as a critical component in his exploration of form, space, and emotion. By employing a harmonious balance between vibrant hues and subdued tones, Party adeptly establishes a dialogue between contrasting elements, enabling his work to captivate the viewer and elicit cerebral interactions between pigment and audience.

 

Party's dexterity in colour application is further exemplified by his ability to manipulate tonal values, gradients, and colour relationships, leading to the creation of strikingly atmospheric and immersive scenes. He rarely uses the same colour across his paintings, hoarding over 2000 different hues stacked up in boxes in his studio: ‘It’s more like house painting. You have the options, and you choose this one’. As for the source of his palette – ‘You never know where your tastes are from,’ he explains. ‘But for 10 years I did a lot of spray paint and basically you use super strong contrasts for a very obvious reason: It has to be very visible from far away.’ ^iv

 

This nuanced (almost academic) approach to colour theory imbues his work with a distinct visual language that is both alluring and thought-provoking. The chromatic sophistication that Party undertakes allows him to challenge the boundaries of traditional artistic conventions and particularly today’s infatuation with oil painting, carving his own unique niche.

 

Indeed one of the few colours to crop up through his oeuvre is the ultramarine that casts the annihilating sky in the present work. Party’s deployment of a deep lapis-lazuli recalls the divine tones used in the Renaissance, where it was used to accent the centrality of the Virgin Mary in Catholic iconography because of its consideration as a sacred colour and association with divinity, purity, and heavenly grace.

 

 

 

In comparing Trees and Jean Fouquet's renowned Madonna and Child one can observe a shared appreciation for palette, and crucially, surreality. The complex labyrinth of red trees that cut through the field of blue weep with anthropomorphic traits, their stylised limbs that almost seem to gesture, caress and beckon. Similarly, Fouquet constructs ambiguous spatial relationships between the hordes of cherubim and seraphim, the Madonna’s decadent throne and her own sumptuous exaltation. When we consider these works together, what is quickly revealed is a shared mastery creative output – one that provokes contemplation and fascination in equal measures.

 

 

Polychrome Infinity

 

Magritte, a seminal figure of the Surrealist movement, also shares in Party's predilection for the enchanting and the mysterious. His depictions of trees often challenge conventional perceptions, as he deftly manipulates scale, context, and perspective to create a visual tapestry of riddles and paradoxes, as represented in L’incendie (1948).

 

 

The present work's geometric abstractions are redolent of the vacant, eerily smooth renderings of 3D forms, a nod to Party’s decade spent working as a computer animator and lifelong interest in technology, which has held a conspicuous influence. ‘We’re so used to seeing computer-generated images now that it has a big impact on how we see all images. I think this describes the look my figures have,’ the artist shares. ‘I see them almost as like a thin layer of something and I don’t know what is behind them’ ^v.

 

Analogous to Magritte, Party's enigmatic compositions serve as portals to a dreamscape where the familiar becomes disconcertingly unfamiliar. His finessed application of pastels aids in his commitment to blending the boundaries between reality and illusion, as the soft and velvety texture of his strokes imbues his arboreal subjects with an uncanny yet arresting presence.

 

This mysterious quality further alludes to the work of Colombian artist Fernando Botero, who similarly rejected placid scenery to create works that oozed a unique kind of raw energy and agony, like in Man at the Street.

 

His proficiency in merging traditional landscape elements with audacious, surrealist nuances and a dynamic palette distinguishes him within the constantly evolving sphere of contemporary creativity. By challenging established paradigms, Party breathes new life into the genre of landscape painting, paving the way for future artists to push the boundaries of how contemporary landscapes are perceived and appreciated. Party’s work not only reflects the zeitgeist of the current artistic milieu but also actively shapes it, thus solidifying his position as a vital contributor to the ongoing discourse of contemporary art.
 

 

Collector’s Digest

 

• The present work boasts impressive exhibition history, having been exhibited at Party’s recent 2022 solo show at Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, and in his solo exhibition at Westfälischer Kunstverein, Münster, from 8 November 2014 – 18 January 2015.

• The artist’s top result at auction was recently achieved in Hong Kong in November 2022. In addition to the fact that Party’s top 10 results at auction have all been achieved in the past three years, this is indicative of the ongoing strength of the artist’s market dominance.

• Like the present work, Party’s top three results at auction are for landscape compositions.

• The artist’s latest mural protect, Draw the Curtain (2021), was unveiled at the Hirshhorn Museum, Washington D.C., covering the entire facade of the museum’s renowned cylindrical building. Other highly immersive and critically acclaimed solo museum exhibitions include  Boilly, Le Consortium Museum, Dijon (2021-2022); Rovine, MASI Lugano (2021);  Pastel, FLAG Art Foundation, New York (2019); Arches, M WOODS, Beijing (2018-2019); and Magritte Parti, Magritte Museum, Brussels (2018), amongst others.

• Party’s work is represented in over 30 public collections worldwide, including K11 Art Foundation, Hong Kong; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Long Museum, Shanghai; Fondazione Fiera Milano, Milan; M WOODS, Beijing; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris; and the Rubell Family Collection, Miami. 

 

 

ⁱ Nicolas Party quoted in Catherine Hong, ‘Nicolas Party’s Audacious Sense of Colour’, surface magazine, 4 December 2019, online

ⁱⁱ Nicolas Party quoted in ‘Nicolas Party: Pastel’, Hauser & Wirth: Ursula, 29 June 2022, online 
ⁱⁱⁱ Nicolas Party quoted in Ted Loos, ‘Artist Nicolas Party Revives the Language of Pastel’, Cultured Magazine, 17 March 2019, online
^iv ibid.
^v Nicolas Party, quoted in Loney Abrams, ‘Post-Internet Phenomenon Nicolas Party on the Importance of Painting Cats in the Digital Age’, Artspace, 19 October 2016, online