Talk:Grace Hartigan

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This article was edited by Knlipscomb and evangelineellen on December 10, 2015 at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in the Women in Art class, under instruction from Sbeetham. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Evangelineellen (talk • contribs) 22:01, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

Students edited this page after extensive research as part of my course, "Women in American Art." Their changes went through several drafts and I approved the final version. For more information about the course, please see my user page. Sbeetham (talk) 15:53, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

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this is an essay with no references. removed from main space. WomenArtistUpdates (talk) 18:30, 19 April 2023 (UTC)

Themes

In the early 1950s Hartigan began painting figuratively from the "old masters." Clement Greenberg, an influential art critic in New York during the mid 20th century, enthusiastically supported Hartigan's Abstract Expressionist works, but opposed her painting figuratively. This discord resulted in her break from Greenberg. Painting from the old masters fostered Hartigan's growth in depicting space, light, form, and structure. Some examples of these paintings are Hartigan's River Bathers (1953), Knight, Death, and Devil (1952), and The Tribute Money (after Rubens) (1952), working after Matisse, Durer, and Rubens, respectively.

Shop windows and their displays were a recurring theme in her work. Her series Brides was begun in 1949, when Hartigan rented a studio at 25 Essex St in lower Manhattan. Inspired by the display windows of the numerous bridal shops concentrated on nearby Grand street, Hartigan (with two unsuccessful marriages behind her) began to paint groups of mannequins dressed in bridal gowns. Grand Street Brides (1954), based on Goya's Carlos IV of Spain and His Family (1800), was one of several works that drew the attention of critics and collectors and established her reputation. Later in her career, Hartigan said, "[The] bridal theme is one of my empty ritual ideas ... it just seems ludicrous to me to go through all that fuss." Additionally, she stated, "I paint things that I'm against to try to make them wonderful ... very often." In 1965 Hartigan returned to her lifetime fascination with shop windows with an updated, modern vision entitled Reisterstown Mall. In this painting she began working her way back to more recognizable imagery, though keeping the objects floating in an abstract, buoyant, circular composition. Though she includes a plethora of recognizable objects, this is not Pop Art. Grace was "always too passionately involved with her subject matter to accept the deadpan perspective of Pop."

Hartigan's work often explores, reflects, and incorporates elements of popular culture. For example, in 1962 Hartigan painted an image of Marilyn Monroe. Her painterly, expressive treatment of the subject differs from the impersonal manner of such pop artists as Andy Warhol. Working from several photographs, Hartigan felt that her fragmented, semi-abstract picture represented Monroe more honestly than her glamorous, public image. "Modern Cycle" (1967) captures the American fascination and worship of machines in the 1960s.

Hartigan frequently collaborated with or was influenced by her New York School colleagues, including poets, writers, and fellow artists. The series Oranges was a collaborative project with close friend Frank O'Hara, begun in 1952. O'Hara had written a collection of fourteen poems while a student at Harvard. Hartigan created a painting in response to each of the fourteen poems, incorporating text from each poem into the image.

There is a strong autobiographical element present in all of Hartigan's work, but it took on a more central role in the 1970s. Over the course of her career, Hartigan painted numerous memorial pieces, abstract compositions commemorating the deaths of friends and family members including Martha Jackson, Franz Kline, Frank O'Hara, her father, and Winston Price.