Sampler: Formal 1998

HOWARD ARKLEY (1951-1999)

Sampler: Formal 1998

synthetic polymer paint on canvas
150.0 x 120.0 cm; 153.0 x 123.0 cm (framed)
signed, dated and inscribed verso: Sampler: Formal 1998 Howard Arkley

Provenance:
Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne, 1999
Private collection, Melbourne

Exhibited:
Howard Arkley: 'Fabricated Rooms' 1997 and 'Sampling' 1998, Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne, 28 November - 24 December 1998, cat.3

Reference:
Crawford, A. & Edgar, R., Spray: The Work of Howard Arkley, Craftsman House, Sydney, revised edition, 2001, p.136 (illus.)
Gregory, J., 'Sampler: Formal 1998', Arkley Works [digital catalogue raisonné], accessed February 2025: https://www.arkleyworks.com/blog/2009/11/23/sampler-formal-1998/ (illus.)

Related Works:
Sampler: Contemporary 1998, synthetic polymer paint on canvas, 150.0 x 120.0 cm, private collection, MelbourneSampler: Modern 1998, synthetic polymer paint on canvas, 150.0 x 120.0 cm, private collectionSampler: Traditional 1998, synthetic polymer paint on canvas, 150.0 x 120.0 cm, private collection, Melbourne

Estimate: $300000 - 380000

Result Hammer: $290000

Sampler: Formal 1998 brings together Howard Arkley’s love of deceptively simple though visually powerful formal compositions rendered as a luminous, quivering whole. It is a striking example of Howard Arkley’s highly distinctive 20^th century urban style. Vivid colour contrasts, flamboyant patterning, intriguing spatial relationships and distinctive interior design have long been the distinguishing features of this artist’s paintings. Combined with his unique airbrush technique, such qualities ensured that Arkley was revered in his lifetime and continues to be seen as one of Australia’s most significant and important artists.

Sampler: Formal is one of a series of four paintings that Arkley developed around a single chair isolated in a tightly framed space–Sampler: Formal, Modern, Contemporary and Traditional. Each of the four chairs are variations on a theme that he specifically adapted from a favourite source book: The Instant Decorator by Frances Joslin Gold (1976). The book included transparent sheets under which home decorators could ‘insert their own preferred swatches and colour choices.’ The sampler philosophy and technique informed many of Arkley’s major works from the same period. As Arkley’s primary biographer, John Gregory, has observed, the traditional living room page from Gold’s Instant Decorator ‘served as the principal compositional source for the left-hand canvas’ of Howard Arkley and Juan Davila’s monumental Blue Chip Instant Decorator: A Room 1991–92 as well as being ‘a source for several other Arkley’s works including Floriated Room (1993) (modified); A Roomfull (1994).’(1)

Arkley was presented with a galaxy of possibilities by the advertising industry’s promotion of the modern decorator and home furnisher. Gold’s interior decorator’s manual became a fertile exchange between source and image in Arkley’s work. The artist dexterously hones the details of each room/setting. Sampler: Modern and Sampler: Contemporary, for example, are adapted from ‘Lounge Room #2’. Sampler: Traditional reroutes the chairs depicted in ‘Traditional loungeroom’ and ‘Bedroom’. While our work, Sampler: Formal, presents an amalgam of the chair included in the left foreground of ‘Loungeroom 1’ with other more ornate overlays drawn from a separate set of sources. Its high back, timeless elegance and cleanly formed lines combine seamlessly with the fancy treatment of the curvature of the front legs. The legs are reminiscent of a type of period furniture that had persisted in contemporary design.

Arkley used a wide-ranging palette and inexhaustible combination of colours, surface textures and ornate patterns in these four chair paintings. Strong colours set the tone of the work. Red/orange/yellow; purple/mauve/custard; pink/white are each set against a blue field and variegated rectangular pattern samples in ‘Contemporary’, ‘Modern’ and ‘Traditional’.

Sampler: Formal is unique in its combination of lime green, baby blue and lemon yellow. The artist discovers great nuance within this limited colour scheme. There is a sense of drama and of flux. The lime green is positioned as a dominant colour. It is repeated in the cushions and the side arm rests to the extent that it reverberates forcefully against the adjacent pale blue and yellows. However, in the same breath, Arkley undercuts the authority of a single colour or colour combination by creating a sort of negative push-pull effect. The lime green becomes secondary, partially subsumed by background patterning. The green is transformed by its interactions with the wide open field of blue. It is the same colour but now as if in reverse.

Sampler: Formal was included with the three other chair paintings in ‘Sampling’, held at Tolarno Galleries, Melbourne, over November-December 1998. Significantly, they were all hung along the same wall (see Figure 3). Each of the chairs is rotated slightly differently in the picture frame. This makes for a dynamic visual interaction. The revolution of chairs approximates the different views that could be experienced if customers were to make their way across a ‘shop floor’. It is as if the chairs have been placed on a swivel platform but are caught in time and transfixed to the one spot.

The same showroom floor consumer mentality is continued in sample displays of unique patterns arranged on the wall and in racks built into movable display furniture. Arkley wanted to create an exhibition based on commercial displays and fabric shops. In ‘Sampling’, he took the idea and gave it full voice: ‘Some of the “consoles” displaying a selection of patterns were provided with “spare” canvases, to enable purchasers to make their own changing display.’(2)

The ‘Sampling’ exhibition was well-received when it was exhibited in late 1998. Many of the works were eagerly snapped up. It also set in train a busy period of new artworks and exhibitions that was curtailed only by the artist’s death in 1999.

The strong formal resonance of what became his last paintings is matched by a deep and longstanding interest in aspects of contemporary life – often commonplace, sometimes banal – which he turns into something beautiful and meaningful. His trademark paintings of interior and exterior suburban structures (houses, hotels, freeways) breathe life into things we might take for granted or possibly consider kitsch, or an example of high capitalist excess.

An ambitious vision to create a simulacrum of the colours, forms, patterns, surfaces, and materials fabricated from suburban life preoccupied Arkley for over two decades. Home furnishings are a feature of the chair paintings and other master works from the same period, including the exemplary Riteroom (Art Gallery of South Australia, see Figure 2) and Room with Pink Chair (private collection, see Figure 1), both 1998, as well as Fabricated Rooms (1997–1999, see Figure 4). Arkley’s magnum opus, the multi-panelled Howard Arkley: The Home Show, represented Australia at the 1999 Venice Biennale.

While these latter paintings set up an elaborate tableau comprising whole rooms, entire walls and complete furniture ensembles, the suite of Sampler paintings are more focused. They are brilliant examples of how Arkley went about capturing and re-presenting the visual and intertextual possibilities of a single form in a two-dimensional space.

Footnotes

1. Gregory, J., ‘Gold’s Instant Decorator,’ Arkley Works, accessed March 2025: https://www.arkleyworks.com/blog/2009/12/21/golds-instant-decorator/
2. Gregory, J., ‘Howard Arkley: Fabricated Rooms 1997 and Sampling 1998’, Arkley Works, accessed March 2025:  https://www.arkleyworks.com/blog/2009/11/24/howard-arkley-fabricated-rooms-1997-and-sampling-1998-tolarno-nov-dec-1998/

Rodney James

Rodney James is an independent art consultant who specialises in valuations, collection management, exhibitions, research and writing, and strategic planning for art galleries and museums.

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