Grace Hartigan’s lush ode to Ireland occupied a prime spot on the great patron’s walls. Grace Hartigan, Ireland (1958. ©Grace Hartigan Estate.) Emily Steer May 2, 2024 What artwork hangs across from Mona Lisa? What lies downstairs from Van Gogh’s Sunflowers? In “The Permanent Collection,” we journey to museums around the globe, illuminating hidden gems and sharing stories behind artworks that often lie beyond the spotlight. Grace Hartigan, Ireland, 1958Peggy Guggenheim Collection, VeniceChosen by associate curator Gražina Subelytė This has always been one of my favorite works in the collection. Grace Hartigan is a fantastic artist who worked with abstraction in New York, but less is known…

by Julia Wolfe, KCUR Rage. Pain. Panic. Fear. When looking at Grace Hartigan’s “The Massacre,” these feelings may rise to the surface. In the chaos of brushstrokes, what do you think is the subject of the massacre? Is it a person, place, thing, or idea? Composer Julia Wolfe thought about destruction when composing “Fire in My Mouth.” The piece follows the story of Triangle Shirtwaist Factory workers before the tragic fire that claimed the lives of 146 people: mostly young immigrant women. When listening to the piece, hear how the cacophony of instruments blend with voices. Which ones stand out?…

By RONNY COHEN, Artforum Neo-Expressionism, the style widely touted as the zeitgeist only a few seasons ago, has lost much of its cachet of late, and the word around town is that it has peaked. For many people, particularly the young art professionals who grew up with neo-Expressionism, a very important moment is at hand. They are about to witness for themselves a popular style’s passage from wild fad to the merely familiar. Since the 1880s new “isms” have risen and declined like clockwork, but each time this happens it’s still a bit of a shock for all concerned. After all,…

By Robert Pincus-Witten Which brings us to Grace Hartigan. If raw imagery equals form for the naive artist, then that is where Hartigan has gone. Because she recognized the sexism implicit to New York painting at the time, Grace Hartigan rose to prominence 20 years ago under the name George. In so doing, she drew attention to the male focus implicit to Abstract Expressionism. Hartigan’s work then derived from that part of Matisse in which thin color struggled with the analytical standards set by Matisse’s awareness of Cubism. Hartigan’s text of the ’50s was Matisse’s Bathers by a River of 1916. By degrees,…

Karen Chernick The Art Newspaper A solo stand of the second-generation AbEx artist’s work gives a fuller picture of her evolution over more than 50 years Grace Hartigan moved to New York in 1945 to paint, and her star rose fast. Within five years she had exhibited in a show curated by the art world heavyweights Clement Greenberg and Meyer Schapiro, in 1951 she had a solo show at Tibor de Nagy Gallery, and the Museum of Modern Art soon acquired one of her paintings. The accolades kept coming. But then Hartigan left Manhattan for good in the early 1960s…

By Jennifer Landes Although the art galleries that flocked to East Hampton over the past year have received a large share of attention, the city art refugees in Southampton have made a bigger splash in terms of the spaces they command.    In addition to Phillips auction house in the old town hall building, once home to Saks and more recently Pottery Barn, there is Hauser and Wirth in an impressive two-story white box on lower Main Street, previously a boutique, and now Christie’s auction house has chosen a pop-up location, a transformed midcentury stucco building formerly a garage.     Although all of…