Restless Ambition: Grace Hartigan, Painter
Cathy Curtis
(Author)
Description
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.
Product Details
Price
$68.00
Publisher
Oxford University Press, USA
Publish Date
March 17, 2015
Pages
432
Dimensions
6.5 X 1.6 X 9.3 inches | 1.6 pounds
Language
English
Type
Hardcover
EAN/UPC
9780199394500
BISAC Categories:
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About the Author
Cathy Curtis is a former Los Angeles Times staff writer. She holds a master's degree in art history and is vice president of Biographers International Organization.
Reviews
"Today [Grace Hartigan's] name generally draws a blank. The drama of reading "Restless Ambition: Grace Hartigan, Painter," Cathy Curtis's engaging and thorough biography, is waiting for the curtain of non-recognition to fall. When did it happen, and why? Was it because she was a woman? ... "Restless Ambition" doesn't settle those questions and certainly doesn't present Hartigan as a victim. Maybe that's because, as Ms. Curtis makes clear, Hartigan never saw herself as a victim, even when she was a nobody; she saw herself rather as a woman of destiny, a Joan of Arc." --The Wall Street Journal
"In Cathy Curtis's new biography, we learn how Hartigan defied the standards for femininity prevalent during the 1940s and '50s to become a lasting example of the book's title, restless ambition... When we look at Grace Hartigan's paintings, we see how power does become a kind of beauty, though not everyone will say that about the artist herself. Perhaps, though, we need to keep looking. This biography helps us do that." --The Washington Post
"With impressive knowledge, empathy, and zesty language, Curtis has written her first book, the first biography of Grace Hartigan (1922-2008), a volatile and determined painter...With perceptiveness and vibrancy, Curtis powerfully conveys the passion, anguish, and intensity of Hartigan's life and work." --Booklist
"This spirited biography is the first to chart the career of Abstract Expressionist Hartigan (1922-2008), a painter with as much swagger as any of her male peers...an accessible portrait of a gutsy AbEx figure." --Publishers Weekly
"Restless Ambition is a great and easy read. It really peels back the onion about the Abstract Expressionist Movement, seen through the colorful life of one of its gritty female members." --Jim Levis, Levis Fine Art, New York
Cathy Curtis brings us a driven, determined, and dedicated Grace Hartigan who, as a rebellious young artist, attained a rare degree of success in the 1950s among the male abstract expressionist painters of the New York School. This expertly researched biography gives us a vivid, insightful, and fascinating glimpse into the world of the well-known artists and writers-including Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, and Frank O'Hara-whom Hartigan knew so well." --Laurie Lisle, author of Portrait of an Artist: A Biography of Georgia O'Keeffe, and Louise Nevelson: A Passionate Life
"A fascinating look at the life of Grace Hartigan, a tough Abstract Expressionist woman artist who drank with the best of the men and had a sexual appetite that equaled the alcohol. Ambitious, driven and wrestling inner demons she abandons her only child for what she believed to be necessary for her life as an artist. Cathy Curtis deals with it all in her inclusive and well documented book."-- Audrey Flack
"The combination of [Hartigan's] life and her art as told in this biography makes for a fascinating book which fully justifies the author's passion for her subject...Read this book to learn of life as lived and art as made by a remarkable woman." --The Key Reporter, Svetlana Alpers
"At last, a life of the incomparable Grace! Cathy Curtis's biography is as colorful, tough-minded, and incisive as Hartigan's work at its best."--Patricia Albers, author of Joan Mitchell, Lady Painter: A Life
"Hartigan's life is well worth documenting and makes for compelling reading, encompassing as it does crossroads into wider cultural debates over the conflicted role women such as Hartigan faced as daughter, wife, mother, and lover while seeking to be an artist above all. Curtis gives readers as intimate a look as possible, drawing from numerous published sources, archives, and personal interviews." --Bookslut
"Curtis's biography captures the mute stubbornness involved in persisting with life despite its many disappointments." - London Review of Books
