Grace Hartigan

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Grace Hartigan (March 28, 1922 – November 15, 2008) was a second-generation American Abstract Expressionist painter and a member of the New York School.

Early life

Born in Newark, New Jersey, of Irish-English descent, Hartigan was the oldest of four children. Encouraging her romantic fantasies, her father and grandmother often sang songs and told her stories. Her mother, however, disapproved. A resident of Millburn, New Jersey, she graduated from Millburn High School in 1940. At nineteen she was married to Robert Jachens. A planned move to Alaska, where the young couple planned to live as pioneers, ended in California, where Hartigan began painting with her husband's encouragement. After her husband was drafted in 1942, Hartigan returned to New Jersey to study mechanical drafting at the Newark College of Engineering. She also worked as a draftsman in an airplane factory to support herself and her son. During this time, she studied painting with Isaac Lane Muse. Through him, she was introduced to the work of Henri Matisse and Kimon Nicolaïdes’s The Natural Way to Draw, which influenced her later work as a painter.

Hartigan said of her foray into painting, “I didn’t choose painting. It chose me. I didn’t have any talent. I just had genius.”

Personal life

Hartigan married Robert Jachens in 1941 and had one son, born 1942. They were divorced in 1947. Artist Harry Jackson was Hartigan's second husband. They married in 1949, but the marriage was annulled in 1950. Hartigan married Long Island gallery owner Robert Keene in 1958; they were divorced in 1960.

In 1959, Hartigan met Dr. Winston Price, a research scientist at Johns Hopkins University, whom she married in 1960. Price died in 1981 after a decade-long mental and physical decline that was caused by injecting himself with an experimental vaccine against encephalitis that left him with spinal meningitis.

Hartigan had a close friendship with Frank O'Hara. They had a falling out and did not speak for six years, but eventually reconnected, and were friends until O’Hara's death in 1966. Philip Guston was the artist Hartigan was closest to in the 1970s.

Hartigan died in November 2008 at age 86 of liver failure.

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Career

Hartigan immigrated to New York City in 1945 and became a member of the downtown artistic group. Jackson Pollock, Larry Rivers, Helen Frankenthaler, Willem de Kooning and Elaine de Kooning, Frank O'Hara and Knox Martin were among her acquaintances. Hartigan gained her fame as part of the New York School of artists and painters, which originated in New York City in the 1940s and 1950s. In 1950, Clement Greenberg and Meyer Schapiro were selected for the new Talent exhibition at Koontz Gallery in New York. She had her first solo exhibition in the following year.

Hartigan was often described as a "second generation Abstract Expressionist," who was heavily influenced by her coworkers at the time. Her early career was defined by experiments with complete abstraction, as seen in the work Six by Six (1951) on display in the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center in Poughkeepsie, NY. Hartigan began to incorporate more recognizable motifs and characters into her paintings in the early fifties. During this period, she exhibited under the name George Hartigan in an attempt to gain more attention for her work. In 1953, Grace became her first name.

Hartigan collaborated with her close friend and poet Frank O'Hara on a series of 12 paintings based on O'Hara's collection of poems of the same name in 1952-1953. During her third solo show at the Tibor de Nagy Gallery on March 31, 1953, the paintings included some of the poems' text and were on display.

The Persian Jacket (1952) was selected by Alfred Barr and Dorothy Miller for the Museum of Modern Art's collection on April 18, 1953. Barr received a patron to purchase the painting for $400 and donate it to the museum two months later. Hartigan was the first of the second generation abstract expressionists to own a work in the museum. Tibor de Nagy Gallery sold out exhibits in February 1954. River Bathers (1953) was purchased by a collector (Alexander Bing) for $1,000 and donated to the Museum of Modern Art by a collector (Alexander Bing). The Whitney Museum acquired a Greek Girl.

Hartigan began using her first name rather than George in the summer of 1954. In October 1954, her work was included in the Museum of Modern Art's Paintings From the Museum Collection. She earned $5,500 in 1954 (compared to Bill de Kooning's $7,000 during the same time).

Hartigan's paintings were included in the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1956 as well as in The New American Painting, which travelled around Europe from 1958 to 1959. She was one of the few people at this time to be able to get this kind of coverage in the media. In subsequent years, she appeared in Life magazine and Newsweek in 1959. Hartigan was described as "the most celebrated of the young American woman painters" by life.

Hartigan's work around this period changed, and she began making more transparent paintings and watercolor collages. "I've left the groan and the anguish behind," she said in an explanation of the change. The cries have morphed into a song. These paintings include Phoenix, William of Orange, and Lily Pond (all created in 1962). Hartigan painted Monroe in 1962, marking another shift in her work toward more fear-laden imagery. The Hunted (1963), Human Fragment (1963), and Mistral (1964) are two examples of this mindset and approach to painting. The assassination of JFK and the emergence of Pop art (which Hartigan vehemently condemned) occurred around this time. "The world was ill at ease," she said. America has now appeared as a frightening and foreign place, both historically and culturally. (Mattison 68). Hartigan was named director of the Hoffberger School of Painting, a graduate painting program at Maryland Institute College of Art, where she began teaching part-time in 1964 and continued until her death.

Reisterstown Mall (1965) and Modern Cycle (1967), among other jovial paintings of the 1960s, included Reisterstown Mall (1965), in which she drew from popular culture but retained her expressive hand.

Hartigan's first memorial painting since Frank O'Hara (1966), a riot of 1970s paintings, followed future paintings. Martha Jackson's work was also autobiographical, as the memorial was also autobiographical. The painting portrayed hope in the midst of dreadful days. There was a time before "the raven turned black" was a thing. Hartigan was also experiencing trauma in her own life - alcoholism, suicide attempt, and her husband's mental and physical decline.

In Hartigan's artwork, the 1970s marked a period of autobiographically rich imagery. The paintings of the 1970s largely reflected this desire, having been heavily influenced by the Cubists from the start of her childhood. The paintings had crowded compositions, with limited space and collections of recognizable subjects. Philip Guston became Hartigan's closest artist friend during this decade. Their imagery was based on the belief that icons in the piece were representations of their own thoughts and feelings.

Hartigan's lifetime in the 1970s, Harold Rosenberg, an art critic with whom Hartigan had worked with since her split with Greenberg in the 1950s, maintained that he was a part of Hartigan's life. "The enemy of art, not only to the values of a totalitarian state or a mass consumption culture, but also to one's own established style," he said.

Beware of Gifts (1971), Another Birthday (1971–72), Black Velvet (1972), Autumn Shop Window (1972), I remember Lascaux (1978), I Remember Lascaux (1978) and Twilight of the Gods (1978) were among the paintings painted during this period.

Mary Beth Edelson's 1972 novel titled Some Living American Women Artists included her photograph.

Hartigan returned to some of the figurative images that had a part of her career early on. In some of these paintings of the 1980s, paper dolls, saints, martyrs, opera players, and queens were subjects. Hartigan was struggling with alcoholism, and each day, struggling to abstain, brought more life to her arts classes.

She was given a solo exhibit at ACA Galleries in New York City in 1992. Hartigan's work was included in the Whitney Museum's "Hand-Pooble Pop" exhibit in 1993.

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