Listen to me carefully, you bunch of snobs, Harold Ancart is not just another Belgian painter who has conquered New York. He is a visual negotiator who works at the frontier between abstraction and figuration, playing with our perception like a quantum physicist plays with elementary particles. Yes, this 44-year-old guy who abandoned his dreams of diplomacy (he mainly wanted the diplomatic plates to park anywhere and avoid fines, let’s admit it) offers us a work that perpetually oscillates between here and elsewhere, between the tangible and the ephemeral.
I have examined his works representing icebergs, his paintings of trees in vibrant colors, and his large representations of matches that recall the vertical lines characteristic of Barnett Newman’s paintings. And I tell you, his paintings possess that rare quality of being able to transport you elsewhere while fully anchoring you in the materiality of the painting. It is like being in two places at the same time, a feat of quantum physics that only great artists achieve.
But what does Ancart really do? He works primarily with oil paint sticks, transforming his canvases into battlefields where color becomes the protagonist. For him, the subject is only an “alibi” to push color onto the canvas. When he paints trees, matches, or handball courts, it is not so much to represent these objects as to explore the infinite possibilities of color and composition. It is precisely this approach that echoes Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s theory of perception, for whom the body is the true subject of perception, not the abstract intellect [1].
Consider his paintings of trees, exhibited at David Zwirner in 2020. Inspired by the memory of a French forest road, these works do not seek to reproduce trees faithfully but rather to capture that fleeting moment when light filters through the foliage, creating a kaleidoscope of colors and shadows. As Deleuze writes in “Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation”: “Painting must wrest the figure from the figurative” [2]. Ancart transforms his memories of trees into hallucinatory visions, into material sensations where color becomes the very substance of the experience.
This transformation of memory into visual experience is not unlike the Deleuzian concept of “time-image”, that state where pure perception frees itself from immediate action to create new sensory connections. Ancart himself admits suffering from a “pathological escapism”, a tendency to escape into an alternative realm. Isn’t this exactly what Deleuze describes when he talks about “the power of the false” [3]? This ability to create mental spaces, inner landscapes, is at the heart of Ancart’s journey.
But do not be mistaken, his paintings are not mere escapes. They are anchored in intense material reality. If you saw his installation “Subliminal Standard” in Brooklyn in 2019, that 5-meter-tall concrete sculpture representing a handball court, you know that Ancart is deeply interested in how urban infrastructure, in its natural deterioration, reflects pictorial abstractions. “Abstraction comes from reality”, he likes to say. And it is true, these anonymous handball courts of New York, with their geometric patterns and surfaces worn by time, strangely resemble spontaneous abstract paintings.
This relationship between the urban environment and pictorial abstraction leads us directly to Guy Debord and his concept of the derive. I cannot help but see Ancart as a contemporary incarnation of the situationist deriver, that character who wanders the city, attentive to details neglected by others. Ancart himself had “GRAND FLÂNEUR” engraved on the pocket of his mustard yellow jumpsuit. He identifies with this Baudelairian notion of a fervent observer who moves with the flows of the urban crowd. “He does not walk in a specific direction, but aims to find the marvelous in one way or another”, he explains. “Most of my ideas come to me when I find myself walking and my mind wanders” [4].
Debord wrote that the derive is “a technique of rapid passage through varied ambiances” [5]. Isn’t this exactly what Ancart does when he transforms ordinary urban elements, handball courts, matches, concrete pools, into subjects of aesthetic contemplation? For Debord, the derive is a way of rediscovering the city outside of its usual functional uses. Ancart goes further: he does not just rediscover the city, he rewrites it with his oil paint sticks.
What is interesting about Ancart is that he transforms the ordinary into the extraordinary without falling into the trap of easy transcendence. His landscapes, whether icebergs, mountains, or oceans, are not invitations to romantic contemplation. They are explorations of the materiality of painting itself. As he says himself: “I do not see myself as a painter of images. I see myself as a painter of color” [6].
This approach reminds me of what Deleuze and Guattari wrote about “lines of flight” in “A Thousand Plateaus”. Ancart, in a way, creates visual lines of flight that allow us to escape standardized perceptions. His icebergs are not there to make us reflect on climate change (although that could be one possible reading), they are there to show us the infinite possibilities of color and form.
There is something deeply democratic in the way Ancart looks at the world. “I always try to have a democratic way of looking”, he says. “I read a lot of comics, I look at a lot of paintings, but I also spend a lot of time looking at corners or the floor or whatever you have. I like looking at everything in the same way without any hierarchy” [7]. This absence of visual hierarchy is precisely what Jacques Ranciere calls the “distribution of the sensible”: a redistribution of the modes of perception that determines what is visible, audible, and thinkable in a given community.
One could argue that Ancart practices a kind of Rancierian aesthetic politics, where opposites, abstraction and figuration, materiality and transcendence, familiar and strange, coexist without resolution. His paintings maintain these productive tensions, creating a space where the viewer can navigate freely between different readings.
When observing his massive triptychs “The Mountain” and “The Sea”, exhibited at David Zwirner in 2020, one is struck by the way they play with our perception of space. The horizon line, placed at the same height in both works, creates a spatial continuity that transforms the gallery itself into an immersive landscape. The viewer finds themselves literally between the mountain and the sea, in a liminal space that is neither entirely real nor entirely imaginary. Isn’t this exactly the type of experience that Ranciere describes as “an aesthetic regime of the arts”?
But let us return to Deleuze for a moment. In “The Logic of Sensation”, he analyzes how Francis Bacon deforms figures to reach a deeper level of sensation. Ancart’s paintings function in a similar way: they deconstruct familiar objects to allow us to perceive them in a new and more intense way.
This sensory dimension is particularly evident in his paintings of trees, where the gaps of sky that pierce through the foliage create an effect of constant movement, as if one were driving quickly through a forest. Deleuze would no doubt appreciate the way these works activate what he calls “the invisible forces of the visible”, those intensities that cannot be represented directly but can be made sensible through painting.
And let us not forget this savory anecdote: Ancart transformed the trunk of his Jeep into an improvised studio during a road trip across the United States in 2014. “Painting in the trunk of a car is special because the situation forces you to absolutely not care, and it is great”, he writes. “This attitude allows you to navigate more freely and dare to do things that you could not do otherwise. Not caring keeps you away from vanity. The back of the car keeps you away from vanity; just like the cold” [9]. Is this not a perfect formulation of what Deleuze would call a “line of flight”? A restricted space that, paradoxically, opens up infinite possibilities.
I must admit that I admire Ancart for his refusal of the pretentious intellectualism that infests so much discourse on contemporary art. “I do not like art that talks about something”, he says. “Why does it not offer me the possibility to read it without pre-established knowledge?” [10]. This mistrust of overinterpretation echoes Susan Sontag’s critique in “Against Interpretation”. For Sontag, as for Ancart, the direct, bodily experience of the work takes precedence over any theoretical explanation.
There is also something deeply political in this approach. By refusing to reduce art to a single meaning, Ancart preserves what Ranciere calls its “aesthetic politics”. His paintings do not tell us how to think or what to feel; they create a space where we can think and feel freely.
Take, for example, his series on matches. These ordinary objects, which we use without paying attention, become under his brush monumental monuments, quasi-human presences. “Matches are the thing you see but do not look at”, he says [11]. By transforming these everyday objects into subjects of aesthetic contemplation, Ancart practices what Ranciere calls a “politics of perception”, teaching us to see differently, to notice what is usually neglected.
This politics of perception is particularly important in our era of visual overload, where we are constantly bombarded with images but rarely truly look. Ancart’s paintings invite us to slow down, to contemplate, to fully inhabit the visual space they create. They remind us that seeing is not a passive act but a form of active engagement with the world.
Ranciere wrote that “politics revolves around what we see and what we can say about it” [12]. Ancart’s paintings function in a similar way: they do not tell linear stories but present constellations of images that resist any definitive interpretation. They are, as Ranciere would say, “visual dissensus”, images that challenge our habitual modes of perception without imposing a new orthodoxy.
What is particularly striking about Ancart is that he creates works that are both accessible and complex, immediate and meditative. One can appreciate his paintings for their immediate visual beauty, for their vibrant colors and dynamic compositions. But one can also engage with them on a deeper level, reflecting on how they challenge our habitual modes of perception and thought.
In a world increasingly dominated by virtuality and dematerialization, Ancart’s paintings affirm the persistence of the real, the tactile, the material. They remind us that, despite all our technologies, we remain embodied beings who perceive the world through our senses. As Merleau-Ponty writes, “the body is our general means of having a world” [13].
Ancart’s paintings are the product of a hand at work, a body engaged in the physical act of painting. His oil paint sticks leave traces, imprints, marks that testify to his physical presence. In an increasingly sterile world, these traces of the human have something profoundly moving.
Perhaps this is the true power of Ancart’s art: to remind us of our own corporeality, our own physical presence in the world. In a cultural context where virtuality is often privileged over material reality, his paintings affirm the value of direct, unmediated experience.
What I find most refreshing about Ancart is his refusal of the cynicism that characterizes so much contemporary art. There is an authentic joy in his work, a celebration of the infinite possibilities of painting. As he says himself: “I am more of a liker than a hater. I like to like things. Even if I do not like something, I try to find something good in it for me” [14]. This fundamental positivity is radical. It suggests that art can be both critical and affirmative, that it can challenge our presuppositions while celebrating the possibilities of human experience.
Harold Ancart is not a revolutionary. He does not claim to reinvent painting or fundamentally transform our way of seeing the world. But he does not need to be. In a world saturated with fake novelty and superficial innovation, his conviction that “the idea of wanting to do something new is rather stupid” [15] is paradoxically refreshing.
What he offers us instead is an invitation to rediscover the world through his eyes, to see the potential beauty in the most ordinary objects, to fully inhabit the space between abstraction and figuration, between materiality and transcendence. Like the situationist deriver who transforms the city into a landscape of aesthetic experience, Ancart transforms the visual world into an infinite playground for the imagination.
So yes, you bunch of snobs, Harold Ancart may just be a Belgian painter who likes comics and wanders through New York looking for poetic moments in the everyday urban landscape. But in an art world dominated by concepts and theories, his unwavering faith in the power of painting, in the ability of color and form to create transformative visual experiences, is exactly what we need.
- Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Phenomenology of Perception. Gallimard, 1945.
- Deleuze, Gilles. Francis Bacon: The Logic of Sensation. Editions de la Difference, 1981.
- Deleuze, Gilles. Cinema 2: The Time-Image. Editions de Minuit, 1985.
- Interview with Harold Ancart. Gagosian Quarterly, 2023.
- Debord, Guy. “Theory of the Derive”. Les Levres nues no 9, 1956.
- Interview with Harold Ancart. T Magazine, 2020.
- Interview with Harold Ancart. Interview Magazine, 2024.
- Ranciere, Jacques. The Politics of Aesthetics. La Fabrique, 2000.
- Ancart, Harold. Driving Is Awesome. Self-published artist book, 2016.
- Interview with Harold Ancart. Interview Magazine, 2024.
- Interview with Harold Ancart. Cultured Magazine, 2019.
- Ranciere, Jacques. The Emancipated Spectator. La Fabrique, 2008.
- Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Phenomenology of Perception. Gallimard, 1945.
- Interview with Harold Ancart. Interview Magazine, 2024.
- Interview with Harold Ancart. T Magazine, 2020.
