In Baroque Canoe Crew, Harman paints a scene that is at once visceral and mythological, set against the iconic silhouette of Notre-Dame de Paris, looming like a sentinel in the background. The juxtaposition of such a sacred structure with the clandestine, nocturnal activity of these young divers invites the viewer to contemplate the duality of history—where the grandiose and the forgotten coexist.
The crew, painted with wild, distorted brushstrokes of yellow and red, emerges from the darkness like urban ghosts, their faces obscured by shades and scarves, modern-day specters on a treasure hunt. The use of saturated, almost glitch-like color infusions feels digitally fragmented yet thematically grounded in the gritty, organic reality of their mission: to dredge the Seine’s depths for remnants of a forgotten revolution. It’s a tableau of existential labor, as these nameless men pursue relics of France’s volatile history—golden artifacts and abandoned furniture—remnants not just of wealth but of upheaval, revolution, and the ever-present undercurrent of chaos that shaped modern France.
The Seine, now a murky graveyard, becomes a metaphor for the depths of forgotten history. Much like the Titanic's treasure embedded in the ocean floor, these relics speak of opulence lost and the transient nature of power. Harman hints at existential questions: What does it mean to retrieve and resurrect the past? And, more importantly, what is left of history when it sinks out of reach? The divers are both heroes and scavengers, suspended in the liminal space between survival and glory, each stroke of the paddle on their baroque canoe echoing through the centuries.
The heavy brushstrokes, bleeding color, and frenetic energy are at once an homage to both baroque opulence and a disruption of classical formality. The figures seem fractured by the weight of their task, as though burdened by the weight of history itself. The Notre-Dame, now an architectural ghost, oversees their futile pursuit, a reminder that while treasures may be found, the past cannot be reclaimed in its entirety.
This painting is not just a scene; it is an existential narrative wrapped in anachronism. The crew’s journey into the past reflects our own human need to make sense of history, to dig beneath the surface of the present, and to confront what lies beneath, even if it can never be fully resurrected.
