Grace Hartigan – Baltimore Magazine

Culture Club: Colson Whitehead, Fluid Movement Turns 20, and New Music from Caleb Stine

Christine Jackson — Wed, 06 Nov 2019 17:15:00 +0000

Visual Art

Grace Hartigan: Works on Paper

Track the evolution of 20th-century artist Grace Hartigan through decades-worth of watercolors, collages, and paintings at C. Grimaldis Gallery starting this month. The local gallery has represented Hartigan’s estate since 1979, and this new exhibition covering 50 years of her works will offer visitors the chance to experience her early contributions to Abstract Expressionism all the way through the vibrant, representative pieces that marked her later career. Nov. 14 through Jan. 11, 2020. Opening reception Nov. 14, 6-8 p.m. C. Grimaldis Gallery, 523 N. Charles St.

Literature

Brown Lecture Series: Colson Whitehead, The Nickel Boys

Colson Whitehead is a literary force, and his latest offering, The Nickel Boys, based on a true story of a Florida reform school and the lives it affected over a century, is a must-read. Pick up your copy of Whitehead’s hard-to-put-down novel, and then stop by the Central Library to hear from the award-winning MacArthur Genius himself. 7-8:30 p.m. Nov. 14. Enoch Pratt Free Library, 400 Cathedral St.

Jubilee: A Celebration of Recipes from Two Centuries of African American Cooking with Toni Tipton-Martin

Welcome author and recent Baltimore transplant Toni Tipton-Martin to her new home by attending this lunch and discussion toasting Jubilee: A Celebration of Recipes from Two Centuries of African American Cooking, hosted by the D.C. chapter of Les Dames d’Escoffier. Tipton-Martin’s new cookbook is a lesson in both great meals and underrepresented history, and the luncheon is sure to include wonderful discussions of both. 12-2 p.m. Nov. 23. Gunther & Co., 3650 Toone St.

Music

WTMD First Thursday Festival

Did you skip the rainy WTMD First Thursday Festival at Canton Waterfront Park in September? If so, you missed out on a doozy of a lineup and an incredible night out. Whether you’re looking to get your chance to listen to those sets or relive the magic, Maryland Public TV and WTMD are here to help. The two local stalwarts have partnered to turn the concert into a 1-hour special set to premiere on MPT Nov. 7, with a simulcast of the performances by Robert Randolph, Super City, and Emily Wolfe on WTMD. 10-11 p.m. Nov. 7 on MPT and WTMD.

Caleb Stine & The Revelations Album Release Party

It’s a known fact that Caleb Stine is a Baltimore treasure. Join the celebrated songsmith and friends for an evening of good vibes and new tunes at the Creative Alliance to welcome his latest album into the world. Also on hand will be Arty Hill, the Honey Dewdrops, Ben Frock, and other local favorites. 8 p.m. Nov. 23. Creative Alliance, 3134 Eastern Ave.

Theatre

Freedom: An Evening of LGBTQ Storytelling

Gather your people and settle in to listen to eight LGBTQ storytellers present their personal interpretations of the theme “freedom.” Come early to mingle and listen to live music at the cocktail hour, then sit back and enjoy these sometimes heartfelt, sometimes humorous, tales. 7-10 p.m. Nov. 16. Baltimore Center Stage, 700 N. Calvert St.

Fluid Movement’s 20th Birthday Galapalooza

Grab some glitter and head over AVAM to help Fluid Movement cap off their 20th birthday festivities with what’s sure to be an unforgettable night of quirky company, good eats, and joyous dance and musical acts from the quintessential Baltimore performers. Get a VIP ticket to enjoy an extra hour of signature cocktails and snacks, as well as a bonus performance before the dance party gets started. 7-11 p.m. Nov. 23. American Visionary Art Museum, Jim Rouse Visionary Center, 800 Key Hwy.

Film

The Chesapeake Bay: A Look Back in Film

Sail back to days gone by with this presentation of ‘70s and ‘80s 16mm films celebrating Baltimore and the Chesapeake at the Heron Room. Local film presenter Bob Wagner will screen the archive footage that covers everything from growing environmental concerns in the bay to a crab race and Ms. Crustacean 1985. 6:30-8:30 p.m. Nov. 18. The Heron Room, 3000 Falls Rd.

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Weekend Lineup: Jan. 20-22

Lydia Woolever — Thu, 19 Jan 2017 15:29:00 +0000

New Art for a Modern Museum

Ron Cassie — Wed, 03 Feb 2016 19:43:00 +0000

It’s akin to walking through a hall of wonder.

The Baltimore Museum of Art’s first major exhibition since its renovation juxtaposes stunning new gifts from a cross section of mediums, cultures, and chronology, appropriately beginning with an arresting, black and red, textured oil painting—“Pallas Athena-Fire”—by seminal abstract expressionist Grace Hartigan.

The compelling entrance piece by the Baltimore-based Hartigan, who passed away in 2008 at 86, is part self-portrait, part homage to the mythological Greek goddess from whom she found inspiration and a sense of her own strength and wisdom.

It sets the stage for a dazzling show—New Arrivals: Gifts of Art for a New Century, which opens Sunday to the public—of 200 recently acquired works that manages to integrate an unusual array of genres and masterworks.

In the same room as Hartigan’s canvas, for example, sits René Magritte’s massive “Delusions of Grandeur”—a surrealist bronze sculpture depicting the emergence of a strong female torso. In between: two richly colored, post-impressionistic Pierre Bonnard still life paintings, including “Woman with Basket of Fruit,” and a brush and black ink drawing by Henri Matisse that echoes Toulouse-Lautrec. Then, around the corner—19th-century, Japanese ink and color panels with gold leaf chronicling the birth of the Buddha; three minimalist pieces by the renowned Ellsworth Kelly (who died at 92 in December); and two wooden, African divinity sculptures.

That’s to start.

Culled from more than 4,000 new works that arrived over the past decade in conjunction with the BMA’s Campaign for Art—all leading up to the museum’s 100th anniversary in 2014—the exhibition moves through a number of bright spaces, with pieces resonating with and against one another. A series of four delicate impressions of “Nocturne,” an etching and drypoint study of an evening harbor-scape by James Abbot McNeill Whistler, show the artist experimenting with light and shadow within the same context.

But whether positioned alongside similar work from the same artist, or next to a piece from a different artist—a pair of Degas and Rodin ballerina sculptures, a playful Calder mobile near an antique bicycle carousel, to name two examples—the entire presentation generates a feeling of inspired creativity. It’s almost impossible, however, to describe the breadth of the show, organized by senior curator Rena Hoisington, which encompasses everything from fine art quilts and decorative furniture to abstract prints and urban photography

One of the highlights is certainly Sarah Sze’s contemporary, mixed-media “Random Walk Drawing (Eye Chart).” It’s a mesmerizing floor-to-ceiling installation that combines white-paper cutouts, yellow string, and everyday Western objects into a balanced composition, incorporating East Asian artistic themes—such as those in the more traditional Japanese scroll painting on a near wall.

There’s a bonus, too. Also opening Sunday is a smaller, focused exhibition of roughly 20 new museum acquisitions from Maryland artists.

These include a portrait by painter Raoul Middleman, a portrait piece from John Waters (yes, that John Waters), a series of East Baltimore photos by Elinor B. Cahn, turn-of-the century views of Baltimore by Gabrielle DeVaux Clement, and a color woodcut, “Baltimore. 1992.” by Bobby Donovan—see below.

“We are extremely grateful for the extraordinary generosity of many donors who chose to contribute so meaningfully to the museum,” said interim BMA co-director Jay Fisher. “Their gifts have transformed the collection and made it possible for Baltimore audiences to see these striking works and discover how they resonate with each other.”

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Q&A with Cathy Curtis

Jess Mayhugh — Fri, 22 May 2015 15:11:55 +0000

Cathy Curtis met Grace Hartigan at an exhibition in California in the 1980s. But it wasn’t until decades later that the former Los Angeles Times staff writer decided the larger-than-life painter, and beloved Maryland Institute College of Art professor who died in 2008, would make the perfect biography. We talk to Curtis about her book, Restless Ambition, and what it was like to delve into such a fascinating character.

What was it like for you when you met Grace Hartigan?
Well, the thing is I had never heard of her at the time . . . She was appearing in a group exhibition at what was then the Newport Harbor Museum of Art in Newport Beach, CA. It was the big thing happening in art, and there she was . . . There was not the sort of searching we did today, so I came clueless. She just started in on a sort of aria about her situation currently . . . I’m taking notes, lickety split. She talked about what it was like in the 1950s, how she and [fellow Abstract Expressionist artist] Bill de Kooning would be in and out of each other’s studios. Of course, with the rosiness of memory, the ’50s were then in her mind completely wonderful and the situation in 1988 was not so good. It wasn’t so good for her career anymore. She had really been eclipsed at that time.

In your research, did you find her assessment of the 1950s was correct?
In many ways it was. Yes, they were poor and they had to make do, nobody was buying their paintings . . . On the other hand, they had this incredible camaraderie in the years before people started selling . . . It was almost like a university. Many of these people had not, in fact, gone to college. They had, sort of, two institutions. One of them was what they called “The Club” where they held meetings, and they invited speakers from all sorts of walks of life. They had philosophers, authors, they had composers, and they also spent a lot of time vigorously arguing about what they were doing and why they were doing it. They also had parties, somebody would bring a record player, and there was a lot of dancing. In the early days, there wasn’t enough money to buy hard liquor so they mostly had coffee. When there was a speaker, they would all club together and get one bottle of whiskey or something, and each one would get a tiny, tiny portion in a little cup. The other side of it was the Cedar Tavern. There, too, there wasn’t a whole lot of heavy drinking in the beginning, but as artists had more money, people got pretty loaded there. Many women artists didn’t like the atmosphere there, it was very macho. But Grace, she was tall, she was statuesque, she always dressed up for the evening, she was incredibly self-possessed, and she had a really foul mouth. All of those things seem to have combined for her to be a stand out. She didn’t seem to have any problems fitting in.

Did Grace keep her ambition when she moved to Baltimore in the 1960s?
She remained ambitious always. She wanted to have a higher profile. New York was always her lodestone, New York was what really mattered. I think it was interesting to compare what she said to out-of-town newspaper writers versus what she said to the Baltimore press. I think she was rather canny there . . . She would usually think of something nice to say about Baltimore. It was interesting when she spoke to someone say in Massachusettes, she could give full vent to her feeling that one day she’d come back to New York and she’d regain her title . . . She probably enjoyed being a big fish in a small-ish pond.

Where would you rank teaching in her life, in terms of how important it was to her?
She kind of had to be talked into doing it—it wasn’t her idea . . . It was the president of MICA at the time. I think she grew to enjoy her role, because she could play her diva role with generations of students and she could re-hash her years in the ’50s. One of her students claimed [she] felt nostalgic for the ’50s herself. I guess it just became so vivid in Grace’s telling.

How did you decide to write Grace’s biography?
For years and years I wanted to write someone’s biography . . . I was in New York in the fall of 2010 and I went to this show called Abstract Expressionist New York, which was at the Museum of Modern Art, and there were all the sort of excellent, huge, and wonderful paintings. I thought this was a terrific show. Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline, Willem de Kooning. And I rounded a corner and I saw a very large and absolutely drop-dead gorgeous, extremely colorful painting. I sort of leaned forward to read the name [Grace Hartigan]. And in the next month or so it just sort of clicked. I could write about Grace.

What was it like researching this book?
Grace has an archive at Syracuse University, and I made a couple of small trips there . . . She kept every single letter, it appears, from all of her students . . . there were marvelous letters from people now very well-known: fellow artists, the wife of a famous art writer. There’re all very intense, and emotional. There’s been a bad scene going on and all these letters would be fired off . . . it was just great to piece together the back and forth of it. Sometimes I didn’t even understand what the issue was . . . I never could get the actual date for when she and [her fourth husband and Baltimore resident] Winston Price had their tryst in a hotel in New York. Fortunately, Grace was writing to Beatrice Perry, her dealer in Washington, D.C., and Beatrice would say, ‘He really wants to meet you.’ You just sort of get closer and closer to when it must have been. I loved it. It was really fun.

That’s an amazing story as well, because Grace and her future husband hadn’t met each other before they had their three-day affair, right?
She was so impulsive. All her marriages were, boom, meet them, marry them. It’s almost surprising she only had four husbands, because there were a lot of lovers. I’m sure there were lovers I didn’t even realize she had there were so many of them. She had her one-night stands, and there was really a lot to keep up with . . . Finally, she meets this scientist at Johns Hopkins University, he has a media profile, he was a big shot, particularly just before he met her. And he was making good money at the university, and he was an art collector. He thought she was a sexy dame, and he really admired her painting. So she thought she had it all there.

Did your view of Grace change while you were writing the book?
I had fallen in love with Grace at that point. I thought she was just great, but I had to realize that she was a deeply flawed individual, and I just hadn’t really come to terms with it. I was just so blown away by her-larger-than-life quality . . . I still admire her, though, because she painted some marvelous paintings. It’s a strange thing that happens when you’re writing the life of someone because you feel like you’re living it along with them in some curious way.

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