Restless Ambition
Title | Restless Ambition PDF eBook |
Author | Cathy Curtis (Writer on art) |
Publisher | Oxford University Press, USA |
Pages | 449 |
Release | 2015 |
Genre | Art |
ISBN | 0199394504 |
This first-ever biography of American painter Grace Hartigan traces her rise from virtually self-taught painter to art-world fame, her plunge into obscurity after leaving New York to marry a scientist in Baltimore, and her constant efforts to reinvent her style and subject matter. Along the way, there were multiple affairs, four troubled marriages, a long battle with alcoholism, and a chilly relationship with her only child. Attempting to channel her vague ambitions after an early marriage, Grace struggled to master the basics of drawing in night-school classes. She moved to New York in her early twenties and befriended Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, and other artists who were pioneering Abstract Expressionism. Although praised for the coloristic brio of her abstract paintings, she began working figuratively, a move that was much criticized but ultimately vindicated when the Museum of Modern Art purchased her painting The Persian Jacket in 1953. By the mid-fifties, she freely combined abstract and representational elements. Grace-who signed her paintings Hartigan- was a full-fledged member of the men's club that was the 1950s art scene. Featured in Time, Newsweek, Life, and Look, she was the only woman in MoMA's groundbreaking 12 Americans exhibition in 1956, and the youngest artist-and again, only woman-in The New American Painting, which toured Europe in 1958-1959. Two years later she moved to Baltimore, where she became legendary for her signature tough-love counsel to her art school students. Grace continued to paint throughout her life, seeking-for better or worse-something truer and fiercer than beauty.
The Journals of Grace Hartigan, 1951-1955
Title | The Journals of Grace Hartigan, 1951-1955 PDF eBook |
Author | William T. La Moy |
Publisher | Syracuse University Press |
Pages | 234 |
Release | 2015-01-01 |
Genre | Biography & Autobiography |
ISBN | 0815609175 |
Grace Hartigan emerged during the 1950s as a leading representative of the "second generation" of the New York School of abstract expressionist painters, a movement that achieved international standing for American art. In 1958, Hartigan was the only woman and one of only two artists under forty chosen by the Museum of Modern Art for a show on that school. Entitled The New American Painting, the show traveled to eight European countries and included such artists as Willem de Kooning, Robert Motherwell, Barnett Newman, Jackson Pollock, and Mark Rothko. Published for the first time, Hartigan’s journals offer readers an intimate chronicle of the vibrant artistic and literary milieu of the times. Hartigan’s interactions with many of its leading artists, and her close association with such New York School poets as John Ashbery, Kenneth Koch, and Frank O’Hara, make for fascinating reading. The only contemporaneous record of this extraordinary period in art history, this book is a treasure to the art student and literary scholar alike. Grace Hartigan’s paintings are held in museums throughout the United States, including the Metropolitan Museum and the Whitney Museum of Art. Since 1965 she has worked at the Maryland Institute College of Art, where she is the director of the Hoffberger Graduate School of Painting.
Ninth Street Women
Title | Ninth Street Women PDF eBook |
Author | Mary Gabriel |
Publisher | Little, Brown |
Pages | 944 |
Release | 2018-09-25 |
Genre | Art |
ISBN | 031622619X |
Five women revolutionize the modern art world in postwar America in this "gratifying, generous, and lush" true story from a National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize finalist (Jennifer Szalai, New York Times). Set amid the most turbulent social and political period of modern times, Ninth Street Women is the impassioned, wild, sometimes tragic, always exhilarating chronicle of five women who dared to enter the male-dominated world of twentieth-century abstract painting -- not as muses but as artists. From their cold-water lofts, where they worked, drank, fought, and loved, these pioneers burst open the door to the art world for themselves and countless others to come. Gutsy and indomitable, Lee Krasner was a hell-raising leader among artists long before she became part of the modern art world's first celebrity couple by marrying Jackson Pollock. Elaine de Kooning, whose brilliant mind and peerless charm made her the emotional center of the New York School, used her work and words to build a bridge between the avant-garde and a public that scorned abstract art as a hoax. Grace Hartigan fearlessly abandoned life as a New Jersey housewife and mother to achieve stardom as one of the boldest painters of her generation. Joan Mitchell, whose notoriously tough exterior shielded a vulnerable artist within, escaped a privileged but emotionally damaging Chicago childhood to translate her fierce vision into magnificent canvases. And Helen Frankenthaler, the beautiful daughter of a prominent New York family, chose the difficult path of the creative life. Her gamble paid off: At twenty-three she created a work so original it launched a new school of painting. These women changed American art and society, tearing up the prevailing social code and replacing it with a doctrine of liberation. In Ninth Street Women, acclaimed author Mary Gabriel tells a remarkable and inspiring story of the power of art and artists in shaping not just postwar America but the future.
Grace Hartigan
Title | Grace Hartigan PDF eBook |
Author | Robert Saltonstall Mattison |
Publisher | |
Pages | 160 |
Release | 1990 |
Genre | Art |
ISBN |
Influential New York School artist combines figuration and expressionist technique over four decades.
Grace Hartigan and Helene Herzbrun
Title | Grace Hartigan and Helene Herzbrun PDF eBook |
Author | |
Publisher | |
Pages | 77 |
Release | 2019-09-03 |
Genre | Abstract expressionism |
ISBN | 9781732155398 |
Women of Abstract Expressionism
Title | Women of Abstract Expressionism PDF eBook |
Author | Joan Marter |
Publisher | Yale University Press |
Pages | 217 |
Release | 2016-01-01 |
Genre | Art |
ISBN | 0300208421 |
This publication contains a survey of female abstract expressionist artists, revealing the richness and lasting influence of their work and the movement as a whole as well as highlighting the lack of critical attention they have received to date.
Meditations in an Emergency
Title | Meditations in an Emergency PDF eBook |
Author | Frank O'Hara |
Publisher | Grove Press |
Pages | 68 |
Release | 1967 |
Genre | Literary Criticism |
ISBN | 9780802134523 |
Originally published: New York: Grove Press, 1957.