“Color can create anything you've seen before. But I was not a color-straight-down-on-the-canvas type of guy. I was more emotional.”
—Peter Bradley
For Peter Bradley, color comes first. His 1981 painting, Site at Hardon, gives visual testimony to this. The large, vertically orientated painting is grounded by an aqueous gray background, punctuated by sprinklings of red paint in the foreground, or perhaps peeking through from beneath. Three abstract shapes form an orbit in the center of this work – an off-white flower form, petals radiating outwards; a marigold bubble, ornamented with purple and black dabs; and a crimson splat at the top center of the work, beckoning like a sunset, or cautioning like a traffic light. The work has a textural rhythm as well, the slick background juxtaposed by the thick impasto brush strokes of the colored shapes. The resulting effect recalls a tidal pool with curious blooming plants – or a tableau from outer space. As always, Bradley’s concurrent ferocity and patience of paint application creates a work which is expansive in meaning and interpretation.
Bradley’s trajectory as an artist has been a fascinating one. The artist rose to the top of the art world in the 1970s, having organized the seminal racially integrated “De Luxe Show” in 1971, and even exhibiting in the 1973 Whitney Biennial. Unfortunately, this period of commercial success was short lived, with Bradley soon falling out of favor with art critics, only to be ‘rediscovered’ in the past few years.
In the early 1980s, however, when Site at Hardon was painted, Bradley was still enjoying high levels of success. He transitioned from showing with André Emmerich Gallery to Gallery Hirondelle, and in 1985 would organize a trip to South Africa with the Triangle Artists’ Workshop, helmed by fellow artists Anthony Caro and Robert Loder. Site at Hardon, thus, is a work painted at a critical juncture in the artist’s career – at the pinnacle of his success, and of his technical innovation.
Bradley is known for his association with the Color Field movement, a tendency within Abstract Expressionism; the movement abandoned all suggestions of figuration and instead exploited the expressive power of color by deploying it in large fields which sought to express transcendence and the infinite. In its exploration of pure abstraction, flat space, and large-scale canvas, Site at Hardon exemplifies Bradley’s contributions to the movement.
The title of this painting, Site at Hardon, is decidedly ambiguous. Whereas Bradley’s other titles are often tied to his varied interests – from astronomy to jazz to cultural icons – the titling here does not seem to be evocative of anything in particular. Perhaps this evocative quality is what the artist intended. As David Rhodes wrote for the Brooklyn Rail, “in always concentrating on the formal problems—the fugitive and concrete effects of color and material—Bradley didn’t deny content, he let it be.”i