Harold Ancart: Pools

“I started working on the ‘pools’ during the summer of 2017. I had just moved to my new studio, which was bigger than the former one. Bigger meant that I could do more things, such as casting concrete forms, which I had done in the past. I knew I wanted to do something new but had no idea what that would be. As summer was making itself comfortable over the city, it got warmer and warmer in my studio.

My assistant and I were sweating a lot, complaining about the fact that almost nobody has a swimming pool in New York City. It is because of the real estate—the price per square foot, and the density of the population—that no one has one. But what if they were smaller? Anyone could afford the space for one, and even if one could not bathe in it, one could still invite their friends to have a drink or a cigarette around the pool. Who cares that you can’t swim in it; everyone knows that once you own a pool you never go in....We cast the first one on the same day.’’

—Harold Ancart

Harold Ancart, Untitled, 2020

Álvaro Siza, Piscina das Marés, Portugal. Photo by Christian Gänshirt

Works in progress in Harold Ancart's studio

Harold Ancart

Untitled, 2020

Oil stick on concrete

2 x 23 1/2 x 25 3/4 inches (5.1 x 59.7 x 65.4 cm)

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These three-dimensional relief forms are constructed from Styrofoam remnants from the artist’s studio, cast in concrete, and painted with rich layers and fields of color.

“By the end of the day we had our first pool. A rectangle carved into another rectangle gave shape to a ‘basin.’ For the second ‘pool’, we decided to add ‘staircases.’ I made the decision to paint the ‘pools.’’’

“I like to think that I can live and develop my work in the same way....By keeping my eyes and my mind open, by accepting the inevitability of my work...and in such a way that one never, ever wonders what to do.”

Harold Ancart

Untitled, 2020

Oil stick on concrete

2 x 24 1/2 x 30 1/2 inches (5.1 x 62.2 x 77.5 cm)

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Swimming Pool by Royal Swimming Pools

Harold Ancart, Untitled, 2020

“Their compositions are fairly simple. The ‘basin’ can have any size and take any shape; so can the ‘staircases,’ and the color, well, the color can be anything too.

Soon enough I realized that the realm of possibilities was infinite, so I decided to make more...’’

Deliberately ambiguous, the pools present numerous dualities: positive and negative space, form and surface, abstraction and figuration, and, ultimately, sculpture and painting.

Peter Zumthor, Therme Vals, Switzerland. Photo by Micha L. Rieser

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Harold Ancart

Untitled, 2020

Oil stick on concrete

2 x 26 1/4 x 37 1/2 inches (5.1 x 66.7 x 95.3 cm)

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Harold Ancart

Untitled, 2020

Oil stick on concrete

2 x 23 1/2 x 32 1/2 inches (5.1 x 59.7 x 82.6 cm)

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“Once something has been painted, it enters the world of painting, in which everything is possible. This meant I did not have to worry about the depth of the ‘basin’ versus the scale of the ‘stairs’ etc. It all started looking supernatural and effortless at the same time.’’

Harold Ancart, Untitled, 2020 (detail)

Harold Ancart

Untitled, 2020

Oil stick on concrete

2 x 22 1/2 x 30 1/2 inches (5.1 x 57.2 x 77.5 cm)

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The pools’ scale makes an otherwise familiar object uncanny. In shrinking the size of a pool, though, Ancart amplifies its imaginative qualities. While the artist has always seen painting as a means to travel, these works are also experienced as sculpture in the round, at once real and appearing perhaps as in a dream or a projection. They may not fulfill the standard promise of a pool, but one could still, as Ancart suggested, sit around them with a beer.

Harold Ancart, Untitled, 2020

“You can’t sit on the image of a chair, even though the image of the chair carries all the elements that could make you think that you could sit on it. You can’t throw yourself out of a painted window. This ambiguity has fascinated the viewer since the beginning of painting.”

Harold Ancart, Untitled, 2020 (detail)

Ancart’s pools bear the traces of their making while sharing the surface materiality and color of the paintings he has become best known for. They function, in a sense, as relief paintings that are situated within the three-dimensional space of the viewer, while their painted surfaces offer a range of visual and formal possibilities.

Harold Ancart, Untitled, 2020 (detail)

“The way I work is that I walk around, and then I look at things everywhere,” the artist explained in an interview; “Abstraction comes from reality—all one has to do is to isolate parts of it.”

The pools point to a range of architectural, art historical, and everyday influences and to Ancart’s non-hierarchical, democratic eye. They draw equally from the formal and structural language of Adalberto Libera’s Casa Malaparte, Tadao Ando’s Casa Wabi, the novelty shaped pools found at holiday resorts, and the prefab ones in suburban homes.

Allan Rodewald, The Paint Pallet Pool. Courtesy the studio of Allan Rodewald

David Hockney, Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures), 1972 (detail).
© David Hockney. Photo Art Gallery of New South Wales / Jenni Carter

Luis Barragán, Casa Gilardi, Mexico City. Photo by Eduardo Luque

Stepped tanks at Pushkaranis, Hampi, India. Photo by Weldon Kennedy

Among the works’ painterly free associations are Josef Albers, whose Homage to the Square and Variant/Adobe works similarly engage tonal and visual effects within a restricted format, playing with surface and the perception of dimensionality; Jo Baer’s minimalist paintings, with their emphasis on the edges of the canvas; David Hockney’s pool paintings; and abstract compositions by Richard Diebenkorn and Peter Halley.

Ricardo Bofill, Family House, Mont-Ras, Spain

“[There are] two very simple concerns, both of which are ever-present in my work, but also in the lives of people in general, I think. The first issue relates to traveling and dreaming, the second is bound up with immobility and repetition. Everybody dreams. Everybody is here, but would like to be somewhere further afield. Everybody projects his or herself into the future: it might be near or far, but it’s a better future, where everything will be fine...”

Works in progress in Harold Ancart's studio

Harold Ancart, Untitled, 2020 (detail)

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Featured works and images in video above, in order of appearance:
Harold Ancart, Untitled, 2020
Josef Albers, Homage to the Square: Apodictic, 1950. © The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Swimming pool by Pool Warehouse
Peter Halley, Wonder, 2018. © Peter Halley, courtesy the artist and Galeria Senda
Peter Zumthor, Therme Vals, Switzerland. Photo by Micha L. Rieser
Richard Diebenkorn, Ocean Park #79, 1975, oil and charcoal on canvas. © Richard Diebenkorn Foundation
Álvaro Siza, Piscina das Marés, Portugal. Photo by Christian Gänshirt
Harold Ancart, Untitled, 2020
Josef Albers, Variant/Adobe, 1962. © The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Swimming pool by Anthony Sylvan Pools
Josef Albers, Study for Homage to the Square: Persistent, 1954-1960. © The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Luis Barragán, Casa Gilardi, Mexico City. Photo by Eduardo Luque