Thursday, May 20, 1982
THE WASHINGTON POST
LARRY HARDEN’S ACRYLICS
By Jo Ann Lewis
Since he started as a drip painter a la Jackson Pollock, Washington abstract painter Larry Harden has taken long strides toward finding a style he can call his own. Though he is clearly still groping, Harden’s new acrylics at Addison/Ripley Gallery have several satisfying aspects.
For one thing, he has gradually thickened and enriched his surfaces, sometimes with slabs of deliciously colored paint laid over a loose grid, sometimes with web-like overlays of color topped by a flurry of short, energetic strokes. “Untitled 2” is a work especially rich in the pinks, mauves and greens he handles so well; so are two thickly painted works on paper that number among the best examples in the show.
Good news: This Gonzaga High School art teacher will be included in a group show at the Corcoran next month. His show at Addison/Ripley, located…in the alley behind the Phillips, continues through June 5.
Washington Review, Oct-Nov 1982
Excerpts from the article:
ARTISTS TEN / CURATORS ZERO
THE CORCORAN’S 10 + 10 + 10
by Lee Fleming
ART is created within a societal context…While I could opt to deal only formalistically with the paintings in 10 + 10 + 10, the wider context will not allow this. I am laying my biases down on the table… “Wait,” you cry. “Ten Plus” is good stuff. There are 30 painters in there who might not otherwise get this kind of exposure.”…
Okay. In numbers, it’s the biggest splash the Corcoran has made for area art…
It is not, by any means, all fine art, or even very good art – but neither is that in any city, whether we are surveying New York, or L.A….
It applies no standards…and ends as a tribute to loyal friendship…
Who was I glad to see? …I found Larry Harden’s Untitled #5 far more interesting than the work of those who showed similar “stain sensibility” in other rooms. He created an electric surface that was patterned, yet rich and painterly in the way Zakanitch imbues his paint with lush life, rising above the merely decorative, putting Gilliam’s redundancies, Keith Morrison’s lovely-but-too-soft overlays and Delilah Pierce’s warmed-over imitations of Alma Thomas into the shade.
