GRACE HARTIGAN AND HELENE HERZBRUN: REFRAMING ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM “No rules, I must be free to paint anything I feel.” —GRACE HARTIGAN GRACE HARTIGAN & HELENE HERZBRUN: REFRAMING ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM

“AS ARTISTS, HARTIGAN AND HERZBRUN REMAINED CENTERED WITHIN THEMSELVES AND SHARED AN UNWAVERING RESISTANCE Curated by Norma Broude TO THE PRESSURE TO CONFORM.”

—NORMA BROUDE

September 3 – October 20, 2019

American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center

Washington, DC TABLE OF CONTENTS

FOREWORD 5

PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 7

ESSAY: GRACE HARTIGAN AND HELENE HERZBRUN: REFRAMING ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM BY NORMA BROUDE 8 Part 1. Not New York: Hartigan and Herzbrun 10 Part 2. A Generation In Between: The “Woman Artist” After WWII and Before the Second Wave 22 Part 3. Grace Hartigan and Helene Herzbrun: Transforming the Language of Abstract Expressionism 29

CHECKLIST 46

PLATES: WORKS IN THE EXHIBITION Grace Hartigan (1922–2008) 49 Helene Herzbrun (1922–1984) 61

CURATOR BIOGRAPHY 77

GRACE HARTIGAN AND HELENE HERZBRUN — 3 FOREWORD

The 70s was a wonderful time to be a graduate student in the Hartigan knew pretty much exactly what she would show at the American University art department. Faculty members Mary Garrard Watkins Memorial Gallery, so my first foray into curating involved and Norma Broude brought an urgent relevance to classes in art saying “whatever you want, Grace.” I have used this curatorial history through their leadership in developing Feminist scholarship. I method many times over the years whenever there was an asym- took all of Garrard’s classes, and as a graduate painting student of metrical relationship between artist and curator. Over time, I have abstractionist Helene Herzbrun from 1973 to 1975, I worked as the learned collaboration with artists seems to produce the best results. Gallery Assistant in the Watkins Memorial Gallery (the tiny precursor But back then, when Herzbrun pushed me into the ring, I was 24 of today’s American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center). years old and this was my first rodeo. I keep telling my students “you don’t have to learn everything the hard way,” but getting thrown from Given this history, I was thrilled when last year Broude proposed a horse, as happened to me with Hartigan, does clear the mind. curating a two-person show featuring Grace Hartigan and Helene Herzbrun. The idea brought back great memories of the opportuni- Herzbrun and Hartigan were very different people, but both were ties I’ve had at American University and provided the museum with strong, independent artists. Both had made their careers as abstract an opportunity to achieve another part of its mission: showcasing expressionists in a male-dominated world, and they possessed and re-evaluating the careers of important and compelling artists. the self-confidence to realize and express their unique visions.

One experience that set me on a new career path binds these On behalf of the students, faculty, and friends of the American two painters in my mind. In 1974 Herzbrun suggested I make University Museum, I want to thank Norma Broude for a catalog an appointment to visit Grace Hartigan’s studio in Baltimore and essay that is a real contribution to our understanding of how women put together a show of her new figurative work for our gallery. of their generation made a lasting difference in the way the art world This was to be my first crash course in curatorial practice. operates. Her exhibition also reminds us that more work needs to be done before economic and critical discrimination against women Grace Hartigan and her studio assistant, Rex Stevens (who still in any field is no longer a viable option. represents Hartigan’s estate) received me at the side door of a down-at-the-heel, antebellum commercial building in Baltimore’s Our deepest gratitude also goes to the private collectors, among Fells Point—a centuries’ old shipbuilding area known to sailors, them Hart Perry and Elisabeth French, and to the Smithsonian privateers, and an array of shady characters for its three Bs: American Art Museum and the National Gallery of Art in Washing- brothels, bars, and boardinghouses. As I recall, Hartigan’s second ton, and to the Grace Hartigan Estate in Baltimore, who generously floor studio was above a bar and a porn shop (at least it seemed loaned their works to this exhibition. like it to my impressionable eyes). JACK RASMUSSEN We went up a very long, steep, and narrow stairway to get to the Director & Curator studio which was filled with the kitschy detritus of Fells Point: a American University Museum life-sized Styrofoam cactus, plastic toys and sea creatures, etc. at the Katzen Arts Center I couldn’t help but notice these objects from the street appeared Washington, DC as motifs in the paintings in progress around the studio.

Helene Herzbrun, Entrances (detail), 1977. Acrylic on canvas, framed: 52 5/8 × 52 3/4 × 1 5/8 in., image: 52 × 52 in. American University Museum, X1639.

4 — GRACE HARTIGAN AND HELENE HERZBRUN GRACE HARTIGAN AND HELENE HERZBRUN — 5 PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Inspiration for this show comes in part from my personal acquain- My thanks and appreciation go as well to members of the AU tance with both of the “second-generation” Abstract-Expressionist Museum’s professional staff, whose work in countless ways has painters whose work is freshly showcased here. I got to know Grace made this exhibition possible: to Kristi-Anne Shaer, Associate Hartigan, though only briefly, when I curated an exhibition of her Director, and Carla Galfano, Registrar, for their invaluable work in work for the Watkins Art Gallery at American University in 1987; and organizing loans and facilitating various forms of interface for me I was Helene Herzbrun’s colleague at this university for almost a within the museum and across the university; to Jessica Pochesci, decade, between my arrival as a member of the art history faculty in Assistant Registrar, for help with research in the Registrar’s office 1975 and her death in 1984. files; to Kevin Runyon, Preparator, for the show’s superb installation; and to Elizabeth Cowgill, Marketing and Publications Specialist, for Both of these women made the Baltimore/Washington area their ably coordinating various aspects of this catalogue and bringing its home, and their work, newly seen here in juxtaposition, is contex- publication to successful fruition. tualized from the dual perspectives of gender and geography. In this show, I have set out to challenge the bias of the New York art Special gratitude is owed to the artist Ron Haynie, who was a stu- world, which routinely ignores the careers and/or undervalues the dent and colleague of Herzbrun’s, and to Glenna Haynie, who was legacy of artists such as Hartigan and Herzbrun, artists who lived Art Department Administrative Coordinator during the years of Her- and worked productively outside of New York for many decades. zbrun’s tenure at AU. They prepared her papers, now an indispens- As an early member of the Abstract Expressionist circle, Hartigan able research tool, for deposit with the American University Archive, had enjoyed real success in New York in the 1950s; and even after and organized the contents of her studio for two major posthumous her move to Baltimore in 1960, her work never entirely disappeared exhibitions of her work that were held at AU in 1984 and 1988. from the consciousness of the mainstream. Today, nevertheless, the Both, now deceased, were Herzbrun’s faithful friends. They were bulk of attention to her art and life continues to focus on her New instrumental in helping to preserve her oeuvre and her legacy for York-based work of that single decade, the 1950s, and the nearly future generations, who will remain, as do I, in their debt. five decades when she lived and worked in Baltimore are rarely NORMA BROUDE acknowledged or considered in any depth. This exhibition takes a Professor Emerita of Art History radically opposed position, assigning newly relevant and positive American University value to Hartigan’s nearly fifty years of creative work in Baltimore and Washington, DC to Herzbrun’s long and fruitful career in Washington, DC.

In choosing a geographic focus, I have been inspired by the Ameri- can University Museum’s commitment to documenting and making freshly relevant the artistic heritage of the Washington community, a program that has been carried out with great success for more than a decade by the museum’s director, Jack Rasmussen. I extend to him here my personal thanks for the genuine enthusiasm with which he greeted the Hartigan/Herzbrun project and for the support that he has given it.

Grace Hartigan, Reisterstown Mall (detail), 1965. Oil on canvas, 80 × 102 in. Perry Collection.

6 — GRACE HARTIGAN AND HELENE HERZBRUN GRACE HARTIGAN AND HELENE HERZBRUN — 7 by Norma Broude Professor Emerita of Art History, American University

Grace Hartigan and Helene Herzbrun: Reframing Abstract Expressionism

Grace Hartigan, Untitled (detail), n.d. Mixed media on paper, 10 3/4 x 17 in. Perry Collection. Opposite: Helene Herzbrun, Stones at Sounion (detail), 1976. Acrylic on canvas, framed: 53 1/4 × 54 7/8 × 1 1/2 in., image: 52 1/4 × 53 7/8 in. American University Museum, FIC.2018.100.1. PART 1 a reputation that was both national and international in scope.2 abstract and all-over style that quickly attracted critical atten- Born and raised in New Jersey, she worked during WWII as a tion. In 1950, when she was 28, the influential critic Clement Not New York: mechanical draughtman in an aircraft factory while taking art Greenberg and the art historian Meyer Schapiro chose one classes at night. By 1946, determined to become an artist, of her paintings for their New Talent 1950 show at the Kootz Hartigan and Herzbrun she had moved to New York, eventually settling into the Lower Gallery, generating interest that led to her first solo exhibition East Side of Manhattan. She did not hesitate to introduce her- the next year at the Tibor de Nagy Gallery, for which Green- In the second half of the twentieth century, the Washington, DC self to Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning, whose then berg had recommended her. But Greenberg’s original support area became home to two remarkable painters of the second still controversial work she admired. Befriended by these two for Hartigan’s purely abstract work dimmed in 1952, when her Abstract Expressionist generation, Grace Hartigan (1922–2008) major artists, Hartigan quickly went on to form a network of emerging taste for referential imagery and figuration elicited his and Helene Herzbrun (1922–1984). Both had taken inspira- personal and professional alliances with many of the emerging disapproval and her angry resistance, leading to a lasting break tion from and strongly identified with the painterly abstraction artists in the Abstract Expressionist orbit, drinking and socializ- between them.6 and zeitgeist of the Abstract Expressionist movement that had ing with them at the Cedar Tavern in Greenwich Village where Her defiance of Greenberg and his insistence on the ortho- emerged in New York City during the late 1940s. And both were they famously congregated. doxy of pure abstraction was a major turning point for Hartigan. artists whose styles and career paths gradually diverged from An avid and discerning reader, Hartigan also developed As a younger artist, just making her way in the New York art Grace Hartigan (1922–2008), Grand Street Brides, 1954. Oil on canvas, their Ab-Ex roots, evolving in completely personal and untra- friendships with some of the major poets of the New York world, her resolute commitment to finding her own direction overall: 72 9/16 × 102 3/8 in. Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY, U.S.A. Purchase, with funds from an anonymous donor. Inv.: 55.27. ditional ways during the many decades when they worked as school. Notable among these were Frank O’Hara and Barbara and remaining true to herself as an artist, in the face of Green- artists and teachers in the Baltimore/Washington region. Guest, with whom she collaborated and whose work and the- berg’s power and intransigence, was an act of high courage. In an era when New York had become the geographical matic predilections helped her to find her own focus and sub- As she wrote in her journal on March 31, 1952, shortly after her center of a rapidly evolving art world, both Hartigan and Her- jectivity in the 1950s and early 60s, a period when her paintings falling out with Greenberg: “A lot about content, less and less in the following years the museum actively promoted Hartigan’s zbrun chose to spend most of their working lives as creative oscillated between pure abstraction and metaphoric imagery.3 interested in ‘pure’ painting… No rules, I must be free to paint work and reputation. She was the only woman and one of the artists outside of that city, a choice that allowed each to be It was O’Hara’s willingness to mix high and low art in his poetry anything I feel.”7 And on June 6: “Oh, the mystery of the image. youngest artists to be included by Barr and curator Dorothy C. more fully in touch with her own identity and to develop her that first encouraged her to see images and objects in the world Nature, you monster you. I was on the edge of succumbing to Miller in two defining MoMA shows of that decade:12 Amer- own dialogue with painting away from the constantly changing around her as poetic metaphors, inspiring her to cast a wide net the need of looking ‘modern’—abstract—contemporary. All of icans of 1956, and The New American Painting, a traveling cultural fashions and pressures of the commercial mainstream. for her sources of inspiration. These ranged from the earthy and which is fashion, not painting, and is most dangerous.”8 And exhibition that introduced Abstract Expressionism to audiences I will consider here some of the commonalities and differences naturalist Spanish paintings of Goya, Velasquez, and Zurbaran still later that year, in an entry on October 16: “…am faced in eight European cities in 1958 and 1959. A flurry of media that marked the careers and working lives of these two artists, “discovered” by Hartigan at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in with the obvious fact that I am an instinctive painter, and that attention accompanied these shows, with articles and photo framed by issues not only of geography but also of gender. 1952, in an experience that she likened in her journals to “an this ‘reaction,’ this ‘naturalism’ has been storing up for almost shoots that featured Hartigan and her work appearing in pop- For even though both were women who notably rejected or epiphany—or revelation;”4 to the street life and store windows of two years. So I just must see it through blindly and trust in my ular magazines such as Life, Newsweek, and Look. In 1958, self-consciously side-stepped the emerging feminist politics of her Lower East Side neighborhood, which provided the inspira- own instincts.”9 Life Magazine called Hartigan “the most celebrated of the young their era, their art nevertheless diverged in significant ways from tion for such now iconic early works as Grand Street Brides of But as one door to career support closed, another opened. American women painters.”11 And in 1959, so great was her the now infamously macho esthetic of their Ab-Ex progenitors.1 1954 [Whitney Museum of American Art] and nurtured her taste In 1953, the Museum of Modern Art acquired Hartigan’s paint- popular currency that Newsweek ran a feature story on her Hartigan’s association with the New York school was more for an art that might celebrate what she referred to in 1956 as ing Persian Jacket for its permanent collection. Alfred Barr, Jr., adjacent to one on the famous Judy Garland.12 central and longer-lived than Herzbrun’s, and partly because of “the vulgar and vital in American modern life and the possibilities Director of the Museum, expressed his enthusiasm for Harti- By the late 1950s, however, the growing pressures of fame this she is the far better known of the two artists today. Har- of its transcendence into the beautiful.”5 gan’s new and personal brand of figurative abstraction, calling and celebrity, always a double-edged sword for Hartigan, had tigan, in fact, enjoyed not only success but real fame in the Hartigan was largely self-taught as an artist, and she her Matisse-inspired River Bathers of 1953 “a work that shows begun to take their toll. In a note to herself after her Newsweek New York art world of the pre-feminist 1950s, and she forged worked from the outset in a colorful and heavily impastoed genius.”10 That painting entered MoMA’s collection in 1954, and photo session in 1959, she wrote: “I must close my doors so

10 — GRACE HARTIGAN AND HELENE HERZBRUN GRACE HARTIGAN AND HELENE HERZBRUN — 11 that I can be alone again. I must have time to think and paint Circle, where Hartigan’s first show in Washington opened on Further recalling her shock and disappointment on arriving pointlessness.”26 In her interview with Cindy Nemser a decade without constant interruption.”13 And in a 1974 interview, she January 19, 1960.20 It was Perry who introduced Hartigan to and settling into Baltimore, Hartigan later said: “Here I went from later in 1975, Hartigan remembered Canaday’s attack as a turn- recalled how in that earlier period of her life and career she had Winston Price, a collector of her work, a medical scientist and the lower east side filled with push carts and loads of subject ing point: “Since then the world of art hasn’t had much interest felt herself “being devoured… I felt that everyone wanted to professor of epidemiology at Johns Hopkins University in Balti- material for popular culture that I worked from, and I came into in what I am doing.”27 But at the same time, the episode gave eat me up and it had nothing to do with my work. My life as more, who became her fourth husband on December 24, 1960. a provincial backwater. I felt tremendously isolated. I didn’t have her a new appreciation for her life in Baltimore, where she knew a person was very involved with love and friendship and not Both the marriage and Hartigan’s subsequent move out of New any friends here.22 But despite her disenchantment and artistic she was free to follow her own creative path: “a city environment involved with thousands of devouring strangers. It was a very York to Baltimore, where she lived and worked until her death isolation, settle in she did, soon discovering the neighborhoods without the pressure to conform,” she told another interviewer confusing time.”14 in 2008, were major turning points for her both personally and that were most akin to her old Lower East Side haunts, and set- in 1981, “without the pressure to change your work according In journal entries from the early 1950s, Hartigan had already professionally. ting up a studio in a former textile factory on Calvert Street.23 In a to what the styles are.”28 begun to talk about the demands that the New York art scene It seems safe to say that Hartigan’s departure from New 1979 interview, she described how she had come to feel “right In 1964, discovering an impulse to teach, and in order to made on her time and energy, expressing concern that those York was not motivated solely by her new love interest and at home” in the downtown area, “which was nothing but one ward off a sense of creative isolation, Hartigan accepted an invi- pressures would affect her concentration and ability to work, marriage: she had had a long track record of sacrificing such burlesque house after the other… So I love the environment. I tation to work with graduate painting students at the Maryland always her primary focus. “One thing that I must have is more personal considerations and attachments for the sake of her like Baltimore visually. It’s a human-scale city like the Lower East Institute College of Art (MICA), eventually becoming Director time alone,” she wrote in 1953, “days and nights both, to get art. Later writers have connected the impetus for the Baltimore Side of New York was… But I literally knew nobody.”24 of its new Hoffberger School, where she reigned for several into myself and sustain my painting.”15 She frequently expressed move with the waning of the Ab-Ex movement on the New York Lacking a community in Baltimore in the early ‘60s, Har- decades as a legendary teacher and mentor to young talent.29 a need to get away from New York and to experience nature, art scene, now turning its attention in the late ‘50s to Minimalism tigan continued to socialize and work productively, albeit at Using her art world connections, she enticed old friends from waxing poetic about the quieter and more secluded experi- and Pop, as well as to the shrinking of Hartigan’s old support a distance, with old friends from New York such as Barbara New York with whom she kept in touch—prominent artists and ences, “connected with the landscape,” that she was able group in the city. But her discomfort with the pressures of New Guest, whose poetry inspired her Pallas Athena paintings during writers such as Helen Frankenthaler, Larry Rivers, Philip Guston to have during her stays in the Hamptons.16 Re-experiencing York, as we have seen, was not new. And in the throes of her these years (pl. 4, page 53). She also exhibited in New York at and Irving Sandler—to visit Baltimore and give lectures and “the full cycle of the seasons,” she told an interviewer in 1957, new passion, she was able to convince herself that Baltimore the Martha Jackson Gallery, an arrangement negotiated for her critiques at the Hoffberger.30 But as the decades went by and provided needed relief from “the tension and anxiety of New could provide what New York had not: the privacy to work in by Beatrice Perry, who continued to represent Hartigan after connections with old friends receded, Hartigan’s primary sup- York.”17 In 1959, she bought a house close to de Kooning’s in addition to the intellectual stimulus of an engaged and interac- the Gres Gallery in DC closed.25 But with the growing popu- portive community became firmly centered in Baltimore, in the Bridgehampton and briefly considered spending most of her tive community of artists, musicians, poets, and scientists. Only larity of a “cool” esthetic that rejected and even belittled the growing numbers of her current and former graduate students time there.18 But she worried that life outside the city might the former, however, proved to be true. As she told the critic deeply felt emotion always at the core of Hartigan’s abstract of all ages, who adored her and in whom she invested herself make her lose her edge, and that canvases produced in such Cindy Nemser in a 1975 interview: expressionist practice, the critical tide began to turn against wholeheartedly. As she told Julie Haifley, who interviewed her “gorgeous” and bucolic surroundings would lack the necessary I had a dream about moving down here. It was a Renais- her. Writing in the New York Times in 1965, the then-influential in 1979 for the Archives of American Art: “I truly love seeing my tension with which New York’s urban scenes and subjects had sance idea. I am an artist and my husband is a scientist. We critic John Canaday turned his remarks about a Hartigan work students grow and get shows and become well-known and imbued her work. “What irony it would be,” she had written, “if would find artists, scientists, poets, writers, and put together in a modest show at Finch College into a gratuitously vicious make a living as artists, hopefully, and see their work triumph. I as the years go on I must either stay in the tensions of New York a salon. Was I ever a dope? My husband is the only scientist attack on both the artist and the Ab-Ex movement, calling the get a lot of joy out of that.”31 for the sake of my ‘art’—or risk living out of town—as I dream that I have met, not only in Baltimore but in Washington, who painting “a proficiently slashing, splashing concoction of color, Hartigan and her work never entirely disappeared from of—and paint relaxed and sentimental works!”19 has the slightest interest in painting. But he isn’t interested in complete with dribbles,” of the sort that students across the the consciousness of the mainstream, even during the long In 1959, as her long-term relationship with the Tibor de literature and poetry. All the other scientists are just interested country had “learned, to their sorrow, to bat out during the years decades after she chose to settle in Baltimore and found her- Nagy Gallery deteriorated, Hartigan found a new dealer in in science. They are not even interested in politics. Whereas when abstract expressionism seemed to be the sure thing.” He self increasingly isolated from that mainstream. She remained Washington, DC, Beatrice Perry, who courted and lavished her during my life in New York I knew Merce Cunningham, John concluded with a dismissive and devastating characterization of acutely aware, nevertheless, of the move’s negative impact with the support she craved. A sculptor and Washington insider, Cage, and all the New York poets. It was a full creative life… Hartigan’s art as “a supreme arrogance crossed with a supreme on her career (as distinct from her art), and as late as 1987, Perry was co-owner and director of the Gres Gallery in Dupont I haven’t met a poet here. It is a fragmented life.21 innocence [which] adds up to nothing more than a supreme she called it “the disaster of my life,” acknowledging that real

12 — GRACE HARTIGAN AND HELENE HERZBRUN GRACE HARTIGAN AND HELENE HERZBRUN — 13 success in the art world was only possible for artists who exhib- While Helene McKinsey Herzbrun36 never enjoyed Hartigan’s ited in New York City.32 It may have been nostalgia for that fame in the establishment art world, she too chose to settle in kind of success that impelled her in 1993 to allow her work to the Washington, DC area well before it had begun to emerge be included in the Whitney Museum’s large group exhibition as a recognized center for new art, functioning there produc- Hand-Painted Pop: American Art in Transition, 1955–62, which tively, and on her own terms, for more than three decades as advanced the thesis that Pop Art had evolved out of Abstract an artist and teacher. Like Hartigan, Herzbrun forged her iden- Expressionism. But ever since the 1960s, Hartigan had been tity in the art world as a “second-generation” Abstract Expres- asserting her dislike for the cool and unemotional cynicism of sionist painter. She maintained ties with New York artists who Pop Art (so categorically different from her own deeply felt and shared that identity and helped to keep her connected with that passionately expressed connection to popular culture), saying world. Principal among them was Jack Tworkov (1900–1982), of the movement, with pointed disdain, that “Pop Art is not who taught summer classes in the Art Department at Ameri- painting, because painting must have content and emotion.” can University (AU) between 1947 and 1951, thereafter mak- Her continued aversion to it was encapsulated by the critic ing frequent appearances on campus as a visiting artist and Vicki Goldberg, whose feature article on Hartigan in the New forming ongoing and supportive relationships with many of his York Times, published on the occasion of the Whitney show, colleagues and former students in the department. Herzbrun’s was entitled: “Grace Hartigan Still Hates Pop.”33 regular correspondence with Tworkov, preserved among his Hartigan’s life outside of the New York mainstream may papers at the Archives of American Art, as well as Herzbrun’s have helped to support her ongoing resistance to being thus own papers and journals housed at the American University reclassified and diminished as a forerunner of Pop Art and of the Archive, are the principal primary documents which permit us later Neo-Expressionist movement34—as a mere “link” to some- now to reconstruct the trajectory and character of Herzbrun’s thing other than what she had truly pioneered in the art world: artistic life and career, in the absence of a significant body of her own poetic and passionate mode of figurative Abstract secondary writing about her. Expressionism. As the critic and art historian Irving Sandler said Born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1922, Herzbrun earned a BA of Hartigan and her integrity as a painter: “She simply dismissed degree in English from the University of Chicago in 1943 and the vicissitudes of the art market, the succession of new trends subsequently took painting classes at the Art Institute of Chi- in the art world. This didn’t in any real or important way affect cago. She worked as a copywriter and designer for an adver- her. Grace is the real thing.”35 tising agency before moving to Washington in 1950 to con- tinue her studies toward an MFA in painting at The American University, where she worked with both Tworkov and Robert Gates. She was manager of the Watkins Art Gallery at AU from 1953 to 1958, transitioning at that point into teaching in the Art Department, where she was a member of the faculty until her death in 1984.37 Recognition of her work and promise came early in DC. While still a graduate student, in 1951 and 1952, she was included in two of the Corcoran Gallery’s annual area exhibitions. Her work was shown again at the Corcoran Biennial

Herzbrun in her Studio, ca. 1960. Unidentified photographer.

14 — GRACE HARTIGAN AND HELENE HERZBRUN GRACE HARTIGAN AND HELENE HERZBRUN — 15 in 1953, and then, reaching out beyond Washington, at the of another with the Museum of Modern Art’s Rental Gallery, dissolution—nothing, land, sea, sky, dunes, existed anymore. Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in 1954. enough, Herzbrun observed, to have made “the whole show And a passionate, furious surf, crashed everywhere—but But opportunities for local artists to exhibit in Washington solvent.”42 Reviewing the exhibition for the New York Times, even it more a sound than a thing. during these years, let alone form a supportive community, were Dore Ashton wrote: …It’s difficult with so much bombarding eye and emo- very limited. In 1957, responding to the need for “a serious, Helene McKinsey in her first New York one-man show… tion to settle down to the abstract nature of painting. Nature stand-alone commercial venture that promoted the work of is, in terms of the loose organization of her compositions keeps getting in the way of art.44 local avant-garde artists,” Herzbrun and her American Univer- and deliberately casual application of paint, an abstract A week after returning from Nantucket, she wrote again to sity colleagues William Calfee, Robert Gates, Mary Orwen, and expressionist. Tworkov, expanding on what her experience there had meant to Ben Summerford became founding members of the Jefferson Yet her innate refinement is apparent at every turn. Most her. In particular, she contrasts the spontaneity of working in the Place Gallery, a cooperative that created a community for the of her horizontal compositions leave no doubt that they were moment, close to nature and its sensory inspiration—“just the exchange of new ideas and the display of cutting-edge art in inspired by landscapes or seascapes. The artist has been glorious feeling of not complicating things with thought”—with Washington, building over its eighteen-year history a newly most moved by oblique light, foggy spaces, obscured masses the cerebral practice of the studio: viable and influential contemporary art scene in the nation’s that take on the poetry of oriental watercolors. Several smaller Painted or drew every day—and never stopped to solve capital.38 In a letter to Tworkov postmarked October 1, 1957, paintings… have an immediacy and freshness that the larger, a thing. Every time I came to the point that I felt I must resolve 43 Helene Herzbrun, Landscape (Rising from Purple), c. 1958–1960. Oil Herzbrun talked about the excitement of finding space for the more ambitiously constructed compositions lack. something painting-wise, I said “to hell with it” and started on canvas, framed: 51 1/8 × 69 × 1 1/2 in., image: 50 1/4 × 68 1/4 in. Jefferson Place Gallery on Connecticut Avenue and about how Ashton astutely notes the poetic refinement of these ges- another canvas… Resolution can wait for winter studio days American University Museum, Gift of Lynne V. Walker, in Memory of Lois Dean Stout, 1997.3.1. the ten artists involved in the project were working to get the turally brushed, landscape-based paintings; and the distinctions when painting goes back to mental exercise. space up and running. Calling it “a dream come true,” she she draws between their sometimes mutually exclusive qualities And good or bad, you’d be amazed (–I was –) at the declared: “And we think the group is strong enough to make a of immediacy and structure point to one of the dichotomies with change in form in what I did. Far different from what I, in my real statement of Washington Art. Down with provincialism!”39 which Herzbrun would habitually wrestle throughout her career. ivory tower on Wisconsin Ave, had dreamed up as my aim Herzbrun had seven one-person shows at the Jefferson The landscape and seascape-inspired abstractions shown this summer. That little island of unlimited vistas overwhelmed Place Gallery between 1958 and 1974, and two solo shows at Poindexter had their origins in a liberating, nearly month-long my theories.45 at the Corcoran, in 1959 and 1976. (Included in the 1959 painting trip that Herzbrun took to Nantucket Island in July of Herzbrun carried home to DC the inspiration of this Corcoran show were Autumn [1957] and Spring Landscape 1958. In a letter to Tworkov, she vividly described her experi- encounter with a very particular and isolated kind of natural [1959] from the present exhibition, pls. 12 and 13, pages ences there: environment. But its esthetic impact on her soon dissipated as 62–63). But throughout these years, she nevertheless sought We have been buried in a cloud of fog for days… But she was drawn back into the routine demands of academic life. representation elsewhere, specifically in New York. With the I must say that this is the side of Nantucket I like, romantic In November, she told Tworkov: “That spirit of creativity brought help of Tworkov, acting as both a friend and mentor, she was soul that I am. All of the greyness of the place begins to make on this summer in a rush of ‘a time to do it,’ an overwhelming selected in 1958 for a group show of new talent at the Stable sense—and what was, granted, an island (with a reputation eye saturation with the place, and a mental exuberance has Gallery, where Tworkov had had a one-person show the previ- for individualists and character) becomes so isolated in mist run itself out… Even in just thinking of work, I can’t decide if I’m ous year. And, in 1960, she garnered a solo exhibition in New you lose all sense of connection, not just with the mainland, naturalist or abstractionist.”46 York at the Poindexter Gallery.40 Consisting of sixteen recent but with reality in general. Like walking into a dream sequence The early experiences described in these letters were landscape-based abstractions (including from the present exhi- in a film. foundational for Herzbrun, establishing an evolving dialogue bition Rising from Purple, pl. 14, page 64),41 the show was The first day it happened, after a week of West Indian between nature and the abstract that remained central to her sufficiently well-received to have led to the purchase of one of balminess, I drove out to ocean side and sat and marveled. practice in subsequent decades. Travel to carefully selected Grace Hartigan, Snow Angel, 1960. Oil on canvas, 69 × 72 in. the larger paintings by the Reader’s Digest and the placement What is naturally barren and lonely became terrifying in its sites, in locations ranging from Colorado to Greece, and the Perry Collection.

16 — GRACE HARTIGAN AND HELENE HERZBRUN GRACE HARTIGAN AND HELENE HERZBRUN — 17 poetry of her immersive experiences in nature at these sites present exhibition, pl. 2, page 51), it is the imposition of the powerless to act on her own behalf to defend herself in the would continue to represent her for the remainder of her career guided her evolution as a consistently abstract painter. The cen- human body in and on nature that inspires and guides the press against influential New York critics, Herzbrun, in Wash- and which was then showing the work of some of her former trality of landscape to her abstract art—not as literal represen- sensations she wants to communicate—not the majesty or ington, was effectively able to use the strength of her position students: “I want to show with my kids,” she said. “I like that.” tation but as spatial concept—was still being articulated by her the moodiness or the poetry of the natural environment itself. in the local community to rally support and fight back. She did About the gallery scene in DC, she pointedly remarked that as a realization as late as 1982, when she wrote in her journal: As artists, Hartigan and Herzbrun remained centered it by countering and exposing Richard’s bias in a series of per- after her Gres Gallery show in 1960, she had had no repre- While choosing paintings for Corcoran, I realized I’ve within themselves and shared an unwavering resistance to sonal letters to a number of well-placed and influential friends sentation there.56 To what extent this had been by choice or never been anything but a landscape painter. With few the pressure to conform, pressure brought to bear by critical and colleagues in the Washington establishment, among them circumstance is difficult to say. Responding further to Haifley’s exceptions even my most pure abstractions breathe and fashion and the steady emergence of newer movements in Ben Bradlee. editor of the Washington Post; Adelyn Breeskin, observation that she had not “been too much involved in the organize as landscapes. Still lifes and figures intrigue me as the later twentieth-century art world. We have observed this curator of contemporary painting and sculpture at the National Washington art scene,” Hartigan offered these impressions sources for drawings but never paintings. (A plant or flower already in Hartigan’s aversion to Pop Art and her resistance Collection of Fine Arts (now the Smithsonian American Art about the differences between the Washington and Baltimore is a still life or figure for me not a landscape—so nature’s not to being labeled a forerunner of that movement and of later Museum); Walter Hopps, director of the Corcoran Gallery of art worlds that may shed light on her attitude: the point, probably space is.)47 twentieth-century Neo-Expressionism. Herzbrun’s close associ- Art; and Diana F. Johnson, curator of painting and sculpture at Well, I found that the Washington scene—it seems to In these respects, Herzbrun differed emphatically from ation with the Jefferson Place Gallery in DC had certainly made the Baltimore Museum of Art.52 Although privately shaken by me, I may be wrong, but—they’re so terribly involved with Hartigan, who had enjoyed the high dunes and potato fields of her aware of and receptive to a wide variety of contemporary Richard’s attack (she mentions it in a journal entry many years the loss of Ken Noland and Morris Louis that their guilt still Long Island but decried, in journal entries of 1954, her tendency art.50 But like Hartigan, she steadfastly went her own way and later53), she was enabled by the interactive structure of the local hasn’t caught up with them, and that the color field idea and “to fall apart in front of nature” and the weakness and senti- refused to connect herself with the movements of the moment, art world, with its personal and behind the scenes connections, the stripe is still a dominant concept in Washington. I find mentality of the work she produced in such environments.48 most notably in her case the Washington Color School, which to control and minimize its impact. Baltimore much more mobile as far as the kind of work that’s Escaping to the Hamptons for a longer stay in 1957, Harti- grew in prominence both in Washington and on the national Despite, or perhaps because of Hartigan’s close associ- being done. It’s much more of what I see in other places, gan revised her definition of “nature” and her approach to the stage throughout the sixties and seventies in the work of artists ation with Abstract Expressionism in New York in the 1950s, of an open mind about what art is, what painting is, what scenery of Long Island in ways that were more congenial to such as Kenneth Noland, Morris Louis, and Gene Davis. The in later years she did not become a joiner, preferring instead sculpture is, what constructions are, what anything is, the her temperament. In an interview that year, she told the critic, frequently formulaic and hard-edged paintings of many of the to isolate and distinguish herself from newer groups and freedom which I think is much more characteristic of the James Thrall Soby: “Three years ago I found nature bewildering. Washington Color School artists would have been alien to Her- movements both in New York and in Washington, DC. Even ‘70s. And we’ll see what the ‘80s have. But I hope it stays Today I think I can learn some of her lessons and translate them zbrun for much the same reason that Pop Art had been alien as Washington became a recognized center for color field open like that.57 in my studio. But I mean, as I said before, nature as imprinted to Hartigan: their lack of expressive connection to a source of abstraction in the 1960s—recognized and promoted as such Hartigan’s work had been collected during these years by man—structures, highways, billboards.” As sources of feeling beyond the purely formal. by the New York critic Clement Greenberg54—Hartigan, work- by major museums in DC, including the Corcoran, the Hirsh- visual inspiration for her recent painting, Montauk Highway, for Herzbrun, nevertheless, was briefly caught up in the art ing in nearby Baltimore, did not join or embrace it in any way. horn, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum. But she example, Hartigan pointed to the billboard imagery she had world politics that the movement generated in DC when, in Nor did she join or associate with the Jefferson Place Gallery was not regarded, classified, or treated as a local, Washington seen while driving on that highway. “In the Four Roses whisky 1970, the Washington Post’s art critic, Paul Richard, in sup- artists in DC, although she did briefly support the fledgling, but area artist. And in major local shows devoted to Washington billboards,” she told Soby, “a rose is as big as a human head. port of Robert Newmann, “a young color painter” who followed more mainstream, Washington Gallery of Modern Art in 1962 art—such as the Baltimore Museum of Art’s ambitious Wash- Our highways are fantastic; I like nature as imposed on by man. the trend, gratuitously attacked Herzbrun’s recent show at the by being the first artist to donate a painting to its permanent ington: Twenty Years in 1970, and the Corcoran Gallery’s artists Most of all I like to work directly from American sources and Jefferson Place, and her art in general, as retardataire.51 Like collection.55 invitational show, Ten Plus Ten Plus Ten: Washington Painting phenomena.” About “nature” in more conventional terms, she Hartigan in her earlier encounters with Greenberg and Canaday In her 1979 interview with Julie Haifley for the Archives of 1982—she was not included, whereas Herzbrun was.58 said that “the openness here helps me to open my paintings.”49 in New York, albeit on a more limited stage, Herzbrun also had American Art, Hartigan commented on the dearth of galleries in To what extent were Hartigan and Herzbrun aware of or But her emphasis is nevertheless on the manmade, as in the to deal with a local critic who trafficked in personal attack and DC and Baltimore when she first arrived. But with new galleries in touch with one another in the years before and after Harti- billboards she describes as sources for her Montauk Highway. career assassination. But the differences in their experience emerging, she announced that she would soon begin exhibiting gan’s 1960 move to Baltimore? Two years prior to that move, Or again, in the more abstract Snow Angel from 1960 (in the are instructive. For whereas Hartigan had been more or less her work locally in Baltimore at the C. Grimaldis Gallery, which in 1958, a letter to Tworkov bears witness to Herzbrun’s interest

18 — GRACE HARTIGAN AND HELENE HERZBRUN GRACE HARTIGAN AND HELENE HERZBRUN — 19 in, if not personal acquaintance with, her already famous con- have provided a social link between the two women. But it And writing again on April 19, 1974 to extend a second temporary. She wrote: does not appear that they were close in any way during the invitation, she said: I’m enclosing an interview with another successful decades when both lived in the Washington area. Despite their We are certainly willing to consider any variant schedule, and famous lady painter. You may have seen it. At any rate geographical proximity, their lives did not frequently intersect just so you come. Are you free and able to do so? We would it seemed to me quite candid and straight forward. I was and their documented points of contact were remarkably few. be very honored if you could, for as we said two years ago impressed having not expected such clear head[ed]ness from And on all of these occasions, notably, it was Herzbrun who we have long appreciated your work and your well-deserved Hartigan.”59 reached out. reputation as an artist. The “famous lady painter” reference to Hartigan, whom In a series of letters dating from 1972 and 1974, Herzbrun, Although neither offer was successful, this did not mark an Life Magazine had recently dubbed the “most celebrated of the first as incoming chair and then as chair of the Art Department, end to the AU Art Department’s—and Herzbrun’s—interest in young American women painters,” was undoubtedly tongue- twice invited Hartigan to visit AU as “a distinguished artist to Hartigan’s work. In the following fall of 1974, while still chair of in-cheek, for neither of these artists would have appreciated teach in the painting program.” In the first instance, she offered the department, Herzbrun initiated an application to the Ameri- being referred to as a “woman artist” or a “woman painter.” The a Visiting Professorship for the spring semester of 1973; and can Academy of Arts and Letters that resulted in the Academy’s interview that Herzbrun passed on to Tworkov is not preserved later, when that did not work out, she proposed a less time-con- gift to the Watkins Art Gallery of the second painting by Hartigan in his archive. But given the timing, it is likely to have been Har- suming appointment as Artist-in-Residence for the spring of to enter the AU collection, Beware of the Gifts of 1971 (pl. 8, tigan’s interview with James Thrall Soby, published some three 1975.61 On both occasions, Herzbrun accompanied the invita- page 57).62 That acquisition probably helped to motivate a rare months earlier in the Saturday Review (and discussed above).60 tions with an offer to visit Baltimore to discuss the program and exhibition of Hartigan’s work in DC, an event that Herzbrun was Herzbrun, apparently to her own surprise, was impressed by any terms that Hartigan might require. But both times, though again responsible for initiating. Jack Rasmussen, now Director the “clear headedness” and candor of Hartigan’s remarks, and expressing interest in and “high regard” for the department at and Curator of the American University Museum, was a grad- there was indeed much in this discussion of the relationship AU, Hartigan declined, citing the priority of her commitment uate student of Herzbrun’s at American University from 1973 between nature and abstraction that would have caught Her- to the Maryland Institute, increasing problems with her health, to 1975. He recalls that when he was working as the Gallery zbrun’s attention. and her need to preserve as much of her time and energy as Assistant at the Watkins in 1974, Herzbrun suggested that he More than a decade later, Hartigan’s work continued to possible for her own painting. visit Grace Hartigan in Baltimore and put together a show of her resonate at AU. In 1969, the Watkins Art Gallery purchased The correspondence on both sides was professionally cor- new figurative work. That show opened at the Watkins Gallery her 1961 painting, Spanish Thanksgiving (pl. 3, page 52), a dial, but betrays no prior acquaintance or relationship between in November of 1975. Entitled Grace Hartigan, The Move from departmental decision with which Herzbrun, at the very least, the two. Nevertheless, the effort at sincere outreach on Herz- Abstract Expressionism, selected works from 1961–1973, it would have been involved. Tworkov, who was often a visit- brun’s part was clear. After the first offer was declined, she wrote consisted of seven large-scale paintings completed by Harti- ing artist at both AU and the Hoffberger, might conceivably on May 22, 1972 to express the department’s disappointment: gan after her move to Baltimore: the two that now belonged We thought we might woo you to Washington on leave to the American University Museum collection and another five of absence from Maryland Institute “for the change of scene.” selected by and on loan from the artist.63 The focus of this show, Would that ever be possible? If so, how early or when should then, clearly and refreshingly, was not New York. from top: Grace Hartigan, Spanish Thanksgiving, 1961. Oil on canvas, we contact you? framed: 57 1/2 × 54 1/8 × 1 1/2 in., image: 56 7/8 × 53 3/8 in. American We realize that this is pure speculation since one hardly University Museum, Museum purchase, 1969.4. Grace Hartigan, Beware of the Gifts, 1971. Oil on canvas, framed: 79 3/4 knows where he’ll be tomorrow but we are serious. We could × 103 × 1 1/2 in., image: 79 1/4 × 102 1/2 in. American University Museum, begin to work on it now. Gift of the American Academy of Arts and Letters (Childe Hassam Fund), 1975.6.1.

20 — GRACE HARTIGAN AND HELENE HERZBRUN GRACE HARTIGAN AND HELENE HERZBRUN — 21 PART 2 had normally been unavailable to them. And for some, that first artist like Helene Herzbrun, poised to enter the New York art flush of empowerment persisted, even after the men came back market at precisely this moment, was unable to get a lasting A Generation In Between: to their jobs and women were again consigned to the home, a foothold in any of the galleries there in the late fifties and early regressive move that was supported in the United States by a sixties. Her style at that time, of course, had already become The “Woman Artist” massive shift in social propaganda. Nevertheless, it must have outdated, as the art world began to move on from Ab-Ex to been the residual sense of that wartime empowerment and newer movements. But the galleries were also becoming less After WWII and liberation from gender role conformity that made Hartigan and receptive to women, as some of Herzbrun’s correspondence Before the Second Wave the other “Ninth Street Women” believe that they, too, could live from that period suggests. In a letter to Tworkov in November and succeed as professional artists in a world that previously of 1959, she talks about a group of her paintings making the The emergence of women in the late 1940s and 1950s in the might not have welcomed them. rounds in New York for possible viewing by museums such New York art world, where previously—with the rare exception But by the end of the 1950s, women’s brief postwar as the Whitney and by dealers such as Poindexter, Peridot, of an artist such as Georgia O’Keeffe—their existence had been moment in the New York art world was over. Throughout the Emmerich, and Widdenfield. Her work was being shepherded barely acknowledged, is a phenomenon newly marked and postwar years, American women in general had been re-so- by Tworkov’s sister, the artist Janice Biala, who had taken it Helene Herzbrun in her studio, ca. 1970. Unidentified photographer. extensively documented in the recent literature. In 2018, Mary cialized to abandon their new aspirations and return to their upon herself to find representation for Herzbrun in New York. Gabriel’s popular, biographical survey, Ninth Street Women: domestic roles and identities. At the same time, there existed Floating the idea of having the new paintings seen by Eleanor Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, a strange disconnect between the societal forces that were Ward, whose Stable Gallery had included her work in a group as innovators.68 But it also served the purpose, I would now and Helen Frankenthaler, Five Painters and the Movement That urging women to valorize and devote themselves to the role of show the previous year, Herzbrun wrote: “But Biala felt she was add, of not only diminishing their accomplishments but also of Changed Modern Art, newly canonized and shone a welcome homemaker and the fascination that a non-traditional woman completely cold on me and woman painters in general.”66 And putting them back into the traditionally subordinate positions spotlight on the lives, struggles, and remarkable successes of like Hartigan, who was featured in both general interest and in another letter to Tworkov, she reported: “In the course of her and roles to which all post-WWII American women had earlier these five women during their time in New York. Two years women’s magazines throughout the decade, might still hold for rounds in my behalf she [Biala] again approached Eleanor Ward been consigned. earlier, in 2016, the Denver Art Museum mounted an ambitious this same audience. The trope of the artistic woman and even who is as usual constitutionally opposed to women artists.”67 In the 1960s, even before the game-changing publication and revelatory exhibition, Women of Abstract Expressionism, the “woman artist” could clearly then be accommodated and For the once successful and sought after “Ninth Street of Betty Friedan’s 1963 book The Feminine Mystique, a back- curated by Gwen F. Chanzit, which reached out more broadly accepted by the public at large. But the category and realm of Women,” the geographical move out of New York City around lash that would eventually become the “second wave” of the to showcase the art of a dozen women who had worked on the “great artist” was still reserved for men. And that distinction 1960 was not so much the cause, but more a symptom and women’s movement was already quietly building among skilled both the west and east coasts during the 1940s and ‘50s in is reflected in the qualified and carefully restricted language with a result of their now faltering reputations. For women like and educated American women whose postwar lives and aspi- the context of Abstract Expressionism.64 which Hartigan was presented in the popular press. In 1957, as Hartigan, who moved to Baltimore, and Joan Mitchell, who rations had been refocused on the home. In the art world, that The increased visibility of women as artists in the late 1940s we have seen, Life Magazine described her as the “most cele- went to France, their new locales also became a refuge that backlash eventually grew among artists in the 1970s to take the and 1950s in the United States was surely linked to the lingering brated of the young American women painters.” And when her permitted them to go on functioning and growing as artists form of a full-fledged Feminist Art Movement; and among activ- societal impact of WWII, an era when women had been needed show opened at the Gres Gallery in 1960, the Washington Post beyond the reach of a fading limelight and newly virulent critical ist critics and feminist art historians into newly gender conscious to do jobs formerly done by men. Countless numbers of them continued to refer to her in these terms, as “the woman many attacks on what they had earlier sought to achieve. Writing in and revisionist accounts of the art of men, as well as an ongoing gained new independence by joining the war effort or by taking critics have called the leading woman painter in the Nation.”65 the early 1990s, I recognized that the tendency in the critical effort to recover and newly value the lives and careers of the on non-traditional work outside the home—as Hartigan had These larger postwar societal shifts, along with the wan- literature to describe women artists of this second generation women who had always ever been artists throughout history. done when she worked as a mechanical draftsman in an air- ing of Ab-Ex among the avant-garde, may help us to under- of Abstract Expressionist painters as “links” between two male The term “woman artist” survived into this feminist/revision- plane factory during the early 1940s. The war years, when the stand why it was that women artists whose careers atypically dominated movements (for example, Helen Frankenthaler as ist era with far more positive connotations than it had ever held image of “Rosie the Riveter” had been glorified, took women had flourished in the 1950s began to struggle and disappear a link to color field abstraction, and Hartigan as a forerunner before. But it was still a term that neither Hartigan nor Herzbrun into the real-world action of factory and manufacturing jobs that from view by the 1960s. They may also help to explain why an of Pop Art) had the effect of denying these women their credit could abide. Long conditioned to believe that being labeled a

22 — GRACE HARTIGAN AND HELENE HERZBRUN GRACE HARTIGAN AND HELENE HERZBRUN — 23 “woman artist” was to be branded as inferior, each insisted on would eventually befall even the once-recognized Hartigan. And certainly challenged her to defend her positions—“You really to see in it a spark of early and still unnamed feminist aware- regarding herself and being regarded by others as an “artist” they did so by learning how to negotiate that exclusion without have to sit up straight to talk back to Cindy,” Hartigan later said. ness.76 For Hartigan’s early journals, published and accessible in what they understood to be universal terms. Hartigan was naming it. When Hartigan, for example, reportedly told one of But the discussion on the whole seems to have been a stim- to us since 2009, and her body of work produced during the always particularly outspoken and acerbic on this subject. As her female students in an unguarded moment that “men keep ulating one for both participants, who agreed on a surprising many decades after she left New York, now give us a fuller the critic Irving Sandler later recalled: “I once asked Grace all the goodies for themselves; they don’t even think of sharing number of issues—including the nature of the creative process, picture of the extent to which she did, in fact, identify with and Hartigan if a male artist ever told her she painted as well them,” the student asked if women “should just act like it isn’t the fragmentation of modern life and culture, competitiveness derive strength over her long career from the struggles, ambi- as a man. She said, ‘Not twice.’”69 And in a late life video happening.” And Hartigan’s response was in the affirmative. as a universal trait in the art world, and even on what both con- tions, and achievements of many of the strong and outstanding interview, she stated unequivocally: “I was never conscious of “That’s it,” she replied.71 sidered to be the impossibility of discerning an artist’s gender women of myth and cultural history, whose stories she often being a female artist and I resent being called a woman artist. For many of the women of this generation, then, denial in the style or attributes of his or her work. But Hartigan would gave voice to in her art: from the ancient world of Athena and I’m an artist. Actually, I don’t like even to be called an artist became a compensatory—and perhaps unconscious—strat- become resistant whenever the subject of gender bias or fem- Dido; to the medieval heroine and leader of France, Joan of Arc anymore. I’m a painter.”70 egy. And this was especially the case for Hartigan, who early on inist political activism came up. She recognized and expressed (pl. 9, page 58); to writers such as George Eliot and George Although Herzbrun was a very private person, far less was rediscovered and sought after by feminist writers for com- concern, for example, that her “very gifted” female students Sand in the nineteenth century and Virginia Woolf in the early inclined to make public statements or to give interviews than ment on the “woman artist” question and on what it had been might be disadvantaged by “a special circumstance which twentieth; and to icons of American film and culture in the twen- Hartigan, she apparently took a similar position, remaining aloof like for her in the 1940s and 1950s as a woman in the macho does have to do fundamentally with the fact that they bear the tieth century such as Greta Garbo (pl. 10, page 59) and Marilyn from and perhaps even unaware of the burgeoning feminist circles of the Abstract Expressionists. The most memorable of children.” But she rejected Nemser’s suggestion that “society Monroe (pl. 5, page 54). A journal entry on December 6, 1954 movement in the academy, even though it was having an early these interviews (for us as well as for Hartigan) was conducted could help women by taking on part of the responsibility” (“I confirms that she did indeed retreat into reading George Eliot’s flowering in her own backyard at American University. In a rare as a taped conversation in the early 1970s by feminist writer don’t know how society can solve the children part of it”), and novels Adam Bede and Mill on the Floss to help allay moments witness statement that corroborates this, the feminist art histo- and critic, Cindy Nemser. It was published in 1975 in Art Talk, resisted any notion of social and political engagement on the of creative insecurity;77 and in 1954 she told a group of students rian Mary Garrard, who had been Herzbrun’s colleague at AU a collection of Nemser’s conversations with notable but then part of the artist: “I am very glad that you are involved with this,” at Vassar College that she was reading Virginia Woolf’s recently since the mid ‘60s, reported this encounter to me: neglected women artists of the twentieth century, a collection she told Nemser, “but I have to devote my energy and time to published A Writer’s Diary and found much in that writer’s cre- It was around 1974; things were exploding in our world. that has become one of the most important sources of primary my work—“selfishly and thoroughly.”74 ative problems and process with which she could identify.78 The women’s movement was in full swing, and some art his- documentation available to us from that period.72 Recalling her In her early years in New York, until 1953, Hartigan had Explaining why she had been able to find acceptance torians were beginning to think about bringing feminism to conversation with Nemser several years later, in 1979, Harti- signed and exhibited her paintings under the pseudonym among the male Abstract Expressionists in New York in the our courses. I decided I wanted to teach a course on women gan described her as a “powerhouse” and as an “aggressive” “George Hartigan,” and she was continually questioned by later late 1940s, Hartigan said: “Men really love women as comrades artists. Helene was chair of the Art Department at that time, interviewer who “really guided those interviews because she is interviewers about her motives for so doing. She repeatedly and fellow creators. What they don’t want is to share any of so I proposed this idea for a new course on women artists to a militant feminist.” But she proudly remembered that she had rejected the idea that it had been a bid to have her work taken the goodies with them. I was friends in a period when there her. Her reply: “But what would you do all semester?” (For resisted and not allowed Nemser to put words in her mouth: more seriously or a ploy to shield herself from discrimination weren’t any goodies. There wasn’t any fame, there wasn’t any what it’s worth, I did get to create and teach the course.) “She didn’t get it out of me, that I was mistreated by men or against women—which she always insisted had not existed money, there wasn’t any power.”79 And this too is an explanation To understand their positions today, we will need to see and anything… I didn’t have a terrible time with those men. I had a in the art world at that time—saying instead that it had been that might ring true in part. But Hartigan’s lifelong and larger place Hartigan and Herzbrun in the wider context of their gen- fine time. Pollock was nice to me and no one’s going to make intended as an homage to two famous women writers who had insistence that she had never experienced gender bias in the erational cohort. From that perspective, it seems fair to say that me say that he wasn’t. Cindy really wanted it to come out called themselves “George,” George Eliot and George Sand: New York art world of the 1940s and 1950s demands greater both shared the conflicted position of women who were caught like that.”73 “I wanted to identify myself with these two great women,” she skepticism and can now be easily rebutted by the evidence of generationally in-between. Unable to identify with the growing The Nemser interview reads today as an instructive, even explained.75 To feminist critics and art historians in the 1970s, her early journals, where she writes, for example, in an entry women’s movement in the art world, they learned to ignore, or revelatory encounter between two women of different gener- Hartigan’s claim rang hollow—as naïve or just plain untrue. But of December 3, 1951 about Clement Greenberg’s negative to pretend to ignore, the woman artist’s historical marginalization ations. But it may be hard for us now to see why the memory in hindsight, and with more evidence at our disposal today, we characterizations of women painters and her own early and and exclusion from the masculine mainstream—exclusion that of it was so overwhelmingly traumatic for Hartigan. Nemser might be inclined to give that claim at least partial credence and desperate sense of isolation in this milieu:

24 — GRACE HARTIGAN AND HELENE HERZBRUN GRACE HARTIGAN AND HELENE HERZBRUN — 25 At Helen’s [Frankenthaler’s] Saturday with the Pollock’s, 1950s. Her insistence to the contrary is perhaps best under- over the past fifteen years, I was curious to see what the a friend in 1994: “The feminists don’t give a shit about me, they Clem, Barney Newman and Dzubus. Clem got on his kick of stood as another instance of that compensatory strategy of Washington Women’s Arts Center would show me… just wanted me to join their political agenda.”90 But in the long “women painters.” Same thing—too easily satisfied, “finish” denial, posited here earlier, that was adopted perhaps uncon- We discussed that day the concept of “feminist art”, and run, and despite her wary rejection of that agenda, it may well in pictures, polish, “candy”; said Al [Leslie], Larry [Rivers] and sciously by many women of her generation. In Hartigan’s case, I feel that women now are free to incorporate needlework, part be feminism and feminists who will be instrumental in pre- Goodnough all struggle. Makes me realize how alone I am. that denial was a self-protective response that sprang not only sewing, fabric assemblage into what was called “high” art. serving, promoting, and defining the totality of her work and her Am I to scream at him “I struggle too, I do! I do!” He said from earlier societal conditioning but also, it would appear, from Aside from this difference, I would find it hard to say that this importance for art history—beyond New York, and as far more he wants to be the contemporary of the first great woman a deep-seated unwillingness to admit that gender had affected is women’s art since many men are adapting similar means. than just another token woman in the masculinist Ab-Ex era. painter. What shit—he’d be the first to attack.80 any aspect of her career, its successes as well as its failures. What I can say is that it is an exciting show.86 In 1952, when Hartigan, in courageous defiance of Green- In later interviews, she also remained firm about another of In 1985, Hartigan joined the National Organization for berg’s scornful objections, abandoned pure abstraction—ste- her early core convictions—that it is impossible to tell if any par- Women.87 And in 1987, she agreed to allow me to interview reotypically gendered as male in the Ab-Ex art world—she was ticular work of art had been created by a woman or a man. But her and mount an exhibition of her work at American Univer- clearly aware that the path she was taking would be regarded as she dealt over time with an evolving feminist culture and her sity, although her wariness and unusual reticence during our by those around her as a weak and “feminine” one. On June own broadening scope of experience with her young students conversations suggested that, as in her earlier encounter with 6, she wrote in her journal: to whom she was always very open, learning from them as Cindy Nemser, my reputation as a feminist art historian had I don’t know what I’m after but whatever it is, if I must they learned from her, she became more inclined to admit that preceded me.88 Helene Herzbrun seems never to have been as look conservative—reactionary—timid or even (horrors) femi- women’s life experiences differed from those of men and that forthcoming or as curious about any of these issues. In April of nine—in the process then it must be. I think I know how really “you bring your experience to your work,” while insisting, never- 1976, she once allowed a group of her works to be exhibited on strong I am, and if a great painter like Matisse could paint theless, that those differences based on gendered experience campus at American University in conjunction with a “Women’s weakly and timidly to clear his eyes for what was to come in the world would somehow not be visible in the work of art.84 Week” celebration sponsored by the Student Program Devel- then I can too. I don’t fear painting a bad picture or a weak But despite the contradictions that persist in her state- opment Office. But she is not documented as having had any one now.81 ments, she was also open and curious enough to respond to substantive involvement with the event, and for the most part As she went her own way, Greenberg’s disparagement of and interact with other women who did not necessarily share she held herself aloof from the rising tide of feminism in art and her work persisted, and in a journal entry on March 9, 1954, she her convictions. In 1980, for example, she agreed to jury a politics, both on the campus and in the larger world. expressed her awareness of its gendered basis. After reporting show, The Eye of Hartigan, for the Washington Women’s Arts In dealing with the women’s movement and questions on Greenberg’s negative assessment of her recent work, she Center, despite her own discomfort with the “woman artist” about it that were repeatedly directed to her by interviewers, continued: “Good old Hartigan—Le Brun—Bonheur [women classification, and her view that gender-segregated exhibitions Grace Hartigan was undoubtedly trying to be true to herself. artists]. How sad all this is, but funny too. It would have upset and education would never promote integration and could She resisted the application of 1970s feminism to herself me so much at one time, how much more confidence I’ve got- not adequately prepare a young woman to deal with “the real because, in her view, she had gone through a different kind of ten in the last two years.”82 And when Hartigan gave a talk in the world… the reality of working with men when she gets out of experience in a different era. Her position is clearly summed up same year to a group of students at Vassar College, where the school.”85 In her statement for the exhibition catalogue, she by her recent biographer, Cathy Curtis, who writes: “Because Art Gallery was showing her work, one of those female students addressed these issues and her reservations with characteristic of her experience in New York, she had little patience for the later recalled that she had spoken to them “about how difficult directness, revealing at the same time that she had been keep- idea that women traditionally had been shut out of the art world, it was to be a woman in the world of male painters.”83 ing up with developments in the “feminist art” world: victims of a male cabal. Her view wasn’t blinkered, it just wasn’t Despite her later disavowals, then, Hartigan had clearly not For artists of my generation the concept of a show of adversarial.”89 But it was a view that she never succeeded in been unaware of gender bias and stereotyping in the art world women brings to mind the amateur, the weekend-housewife articulating, fully or convincingly, for a younger feminist genera- that she lived in and negotiated in New York in the 1940s and painter. Since I have worked with so many fine young women tion whose intentions she continued to mistrust. She wrote to

26 — GRACE HARTIGAN AND HELENE HERZBRUN GRACE HARTIGAN AND HELENE HERZBRUN — 27 PART 3 from private and public collections, many in the Baltimore/ Washington area. It seeks primarily to redirect our attention to Grace Hartigan and the local contexts and communities in which these works were produced, and, secondarily, to promote a deeper understand- Helene Herzbrun: ing of the relationship between mainstream modernist move- Transforming the ments such as Ab-Ex and their rich, regional transformations. The show therefore begins with a few examples of each artist’s Language of Abstract work from the Ab-Ex decade of the 1950s, but then quickly moves its focus to the period when both artists were active Expressionism in the Baltimore/Washington area: a period roughly framed by 1960, the year when Hartigan moved from New York to Balti- Grace Hartigan and Helene Herzbrun both began their careers more, and 1984, the year of Herzbrun’s death. as gestural abstractionists in the mold of Pollock and de Koon- Today, the bulk of attention to the art and life of Grace ing; and both reinvented the signature styles of the Ab-Ex Hartigan continues to be focused on her New York based work movement in very personal ways. For most of Hartigan’s career, of the 1950s, a bias discernable in the canvases chosen to figuration was an impulse far stronger than abstraction. And represent her in the 2016 Women of Abstract Expressionism as the poetic content of her metamorphic imagery increasingly show as well as in the disproportionate attention devoted to that preoccupied her during her years in Baltimore, drawing grad- phase of her life in recent biographies. In Restless Ambition, for ually assumed a more central role in her practice as a painter. example, the artist’s nearly fifty-year-long life and career after About this growing emphasis on drawing, she said in 1974: “I leaving New York are compressed into one third of the text, think I wanted to be more specific. A line is like a lasso. You while the earlier decade of the 1950s comprises two-thirds; throw it over your head and you grab something… Drawing is and in Ninth Street Women, the art and life of the later decades, really like writing poetry.”91 Herzbrun, on the other hand, cat- following Hartigan’s departure from New York, are presented as egorically rejected figuration and embraced pure abstraction, part of a short “epilogue,” in brief and typically negative terms.93 gradually transforming the allover gestural mark-making of her In 1993, the critic Vicki Goldberg, writing for the New York early work into a controlled and poetically expressive dialogue Times, summed up the New York art world’s official position between the techniques of brushing and staining. For her, the about Grace and her defection from their ranks: “In the 50’s, formal and expressive language of color and spatial relations fame turned a sudden spotlight on her, then in 1960 abruptly was always paramount. In the words of the painter Ron Haynie, turned it off… When she married in 1960 and moved to Balti- her former student and then colleague at AU: “All her work more, she sank from view faster than the Titanic.”94 This exhibi- relies upon abstract forms and colors reacting to one another, tion begs to differ from these assessments and takes a radically creating reciprocal movements and tensions. This interaction opposed position, assigning newly relevant and positive value of forms and especially colors creates a specific, individuated to the work of the Baltimore years. content or mood for each work.”92 Accordingly, Hartigan’s early figurative abstraction and taste The present exhibition brings together a selection of large- for the “vulgar and vital” in the street life of New York in the Due to copyright restrictions, this image has been scale and rarely seen works by Hartigan and Herzbrun drawn 1950s are represented here by a single large canvas, her bold redacted for publication online. Grace Hartigan in front of her Fells Point studio in Baltimore, MD, 1990. Photograph by Walter P. Calahan.

28 — GRACE HARTIGAN AND HELENE HERZBRUN GRACE HARTIGAN AND HELENE HERZBRUN — 29 In 1962, in the year of Marilyn Monroe’s death, Hartigan of the image in a traditional still life arrangement in an interior painted a semi-abstract “portrait” of the famous actress, whom with a window (pl. 3, page 52). But her direction during these she regarded as a modern version of the goddesses of antiquity years was increasingly toward the figurative and the metaphor- (pl. 5, page 54). “For Grace,” Curtis writes, “Marilyn was ‘the ically representational. In her 1979 oral history interview for the last goddess,’ and she wanted to show the personal cost that Archives of American Art, Hartigan explained: involved.”100 Working from photographs and clippings, she first I did, at the end of the ‘50s, go back again into total collaged and then painted an image of mundane fragments—a abstraction and battled my way through abstraction into blue eye, a toothy smile, a lank lock of yellow hair, a pair of imagery again when I moved to Baltimore. It took about five eyeglasses—low-keyed and far from glamorous fragments that years for images to come back in again. It was slow, but it float in an abstract space and coalesce to suggest the ordinary gradually came back and back and back until finally, instead physical reality of the actress as a real woman. Like de Koon- of doing a city life painting, I did a suburban life painting, a From left: Grace Hartigan, Summer Street, 1956. Oil on canvas, framed: 81 5/16 × 59 15/16 in. Courtesy of the National Gallery of Art, Corcoran Collec- ing, whose work she admired, and who had painted the first shopping mall. That was 1965, the Reisterstown Mall. And tion (Gift of Dorothy C. Miller), 2014.136.132.; Grace Hartigan, Pallas Athena--Earth, 1961. Oil on canvas, 64 1/8 × 52 1/8 in. Courtesy of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of S.C. Johnson & Son, Inc., 1969.47.17.; Grace Hartigan, Marilyn, 1962. Oil on canvas, 71 × 55 in. Perry Collection. Ab-Ex interpretation of Marilyn several years earlier in 1954, that is the breakthrough painting. From then on, and I haven’t Hartigan, too, was unwilling to detach herself entirely from the stopped. It’s been images of various sorts ever since then.102 representational. But the deeply felt honesty and empathy of her Featured in this exhibition is the Perry Collection’s Reis- and arresting Summer Street of 1956 (pl. 1, page 50). Shown experiences provided by the dirt-streaked, snow-covered urban own portrayal clearly distinguishes it from de Kooning’s aggres- terstown Mall, which Hartigan specifically pointed to as an at the Whitney Annual in that year, it has long been a fixture of streets of Hartigan’s wintertime experiences in both New York sively histrionic interpretation as well as from the now iconic important “breakthrough painting.” A large-scale, brightly col- Washington collections, first at the Corcoran and now at the and Baltimore. and impersonal Pop Art renderings of Marilyn by Andy Warhol. ored work, it is Hartigan’s lively response to the multiple activities National Gallery. Its featured figure of a woman wearing sun- Also in this more purely abstract mode are the three Pallas Created, like Hartigan’s work, in the year of Marilyn’s death, and movements of crowds of people in this suburban shopping glasses is reportedly an abstracted image of Elaine de Kooning, Athena paintings done in Baltimore by Hartigan in the spring Warhol’s brassy and reductive silkscreen images were based mall, a specific site just outside of Baltimore (pl. 6, page 55). riding her bicycle out of the picture space into our own.95 The of 1961, inspired by poems on classical heroines written by on publicity photographs of the actress. Deliberately and relent- Resuming a lifelong fascination with commercial street fronts figure is embedded in a mosaic of store windows and outdoor her friend Barbara Guest. Featured here is the Smithsonian lessly repetitive, they embody the media packaging of a pop and store windows, she succeeds in integrating imagery and fruit and vegetable stands, all rendered in brilliant colors that American Art Museum’s Pallas Athena--Earth, with its thickly symbol. As Hartigan herself cogently described the difference, abstraction in this painting more fully than ever before, present- flatten the space and fulfill Hartigan’s newly stated ambition: “I applied abstract stokes of pigment and dominant earth tones of her images of Marilyn have “an emotional element… not just a ing objects and figures that are deliberately out of scale with no longer invite the spectator to walk into my canvases,” she browns, reds, and blacks (pl. 4, page 53). In her Pallas Athena deadpan repetition, like in Andy Warhol’s work, which showed one another and setting them to float, revolve, and collide in wrote in this year. “I want a surface that resists, like a wall, not paintings, Hartigan paid tribute to the legendary and powerful a big façade. My work gets into the woman herself.”101 She a tightly packed, abstract space that holds tenaciously to the opens, like a gate.”96 Greek goddess of wisdom, courage, war, and the civilized pur- continued: “As in the example of Warhol’s Marilyn versus mine, canvas surface. Showcased in this exhibition are several pivotal works by suits of the arts and crafts, a fierce and independent goddess I want to depict a real woman, and not what she turned herself With a more subdued and elegiac palette, Hartigan paid Hartigan from the Perry Collection, works that reflect her strug- with whom she personally identified and about whom she later into for the public. I see a woman that has the terrible conflict tribute and said a last farewell in 1966 to the poet Frank O’Hara, gle in the early 1960s, during her first years in Baltimore, “to said: “I think I chose Athena for myself because she was full- of loving the admiration and the symbol that she became, and (pl. 7, page 56). A very close platonic friend and artistic col- find in Abstract Expressionism,” as she later put it, “my own blown from the head of Zeus. She had no nurturing. And she suffering from it, too.” laborator in New York in the 1950s, he had written several voice.”97 The earliest of these is Snow Angel of 1960, a painting was an intellectual goddess.”98 These “completely abstract” During her early years in Baltimore, Hartigan felt increasingly poems about her, including the words eventually used as his that continues to present the pure abstraction to which Hartigan paintings of 1961, as she called them, establish Hartigan’s free to move back and forth between abstract and more rep- epitaph: “Grace/to be born and live as variously as possible.” had briefly tried to return in the late 1950s (pl. 2, page 51). The early fascination with the idea of female archetypes and icons, resentational approaches to painting, often in the same work. They became estranged after Hartigan moved to Baltimore and broadly painted tonal areas of this striking work are abstract which continues to grow and strengthen as a powerful source In Spanish Thanksgiving of 1961, for example, the gestural reportedly cut off their relationship on the advice of her psycho- evocations of the visually messy yet emotionally ebullient of inspiration for her art throughout her years in Baltimore.99 abstraction of the paint application barely masks the origins analyst, so that it might not interfere with her new marriage.103

30 — GRACE HARTIGAN AND HELENE HERZBRUN GRACE HARTIGAN AND HELENE HERZBRUN — 31 Hartigan was devastated by O’Hara’s accidental death in July of 1966, which came at a moment when their friendship had begun to revive.104 In this painting, which she gave as a gift in his memory to the Smithsonian American Art Museum, O’Hara is suggested in the heroic and striding figure at the right, twist- ing away into a narrow space and bathed in white light. The remainder of the abstract canvas is densely packed with chunky fragments of heavily outlined gray forms. More reminiscent of Cubism than Abstract Expressionism, these abstract forms, Hartigan later said, allude to knightly armor and tombstones.105 As she moved more consistently toward integrating imag- ery and abstraction in her work during her first decade in Bal- timore, Hartigan also became more explicitly focused on the multiple and metaphoric meanings of her paintings, which she saw in direct contrast to the increasingly Minimalist tastes of that decade. “My own work,” she wrote in 1968, “moves nearer poetry. It increasingly must be ‘read’ in terms of meaning and metaphor… not just ‘this’ standing for ‘that’ but ‘this’ existing on 106 Grace Hartigan, Joan of Arc, 1973. Oil on canvas, 78 × 100 in. Courtesy of the Grace Hartigan, Greta, 1981. Oil on canvas, 79 × 63 in. many levels.” These multiple levels of allusion inform the play- Grace Hartigan Estate. Courtesy of the Grace Hartigan Estate. fully named and constructed Beware of the Gifts of 1971 from the American University Museum collection (pl. 8, page 57). Its title suggests various allusions to Greek myth and drama: and suggestive contours keep the reading eye moving around coloring book inspiration. Joan of Arc was a medieval heroine for example, “Beware of Greeks Bearing Gifts,” the warning and over the painting’s surface, sustaining its liveliness and its into whom Hartigan was wont to project her own heroic sense associated with Cassandra, Princess of Troy, who foresaw the evocative power. of self. In an early Journal entry from 1951, for example, she destruction of her city but was not believed; or another warning In the early 1970s, Hartigan discovered a rich and unex- tried to explain an awkward social encounter that she had had sent by Prometheus to his brother to “beware of the gifts” that pected source of inspiration in children’s coloring books, begin- with Clement Greenberg and Jackson Pollock by wryly asking: Zeus might send him, evoking in this case the misogynous ning with one entitled Dragons and Other Animals which she “What would you say to Jeanne d’Arc at a cocktail party?”108 myth of Pandora, the first mortal woman sent to earth by Zeus came across in the gift shop at the Walters Art Gallery: “I took To underscore Hartigan’s ongoing identification with this female to unleash cares and troubles upon mankind. The setting is it to the studio,” she later recalled, “and it was a coloring book hero, Curtis quotes from another early journal entry and writes: nevertheless meant to be a modern one, as suggested by the based on old prints of creatures, imaginary creatures. And I “Again assuming the mantle of a latter-day Joan of Arc, she tank-like train cars that bounce across the painting’s narrow did a painting. Now certainly there wasn’t any color, I just took viewed herself as ‘a crusader, or a missionary’ with ‘the voice upper register, a reference perhaps to a present-day Trojan off from it.”107 Such imagery appears prominently in Hartigan’s that can speak to thousands.’”109 Horse. Swirling below is a Miro-esque assemblage of bits of 1973 canvas, Joan of Arc (pl. 9, page 58), where the armored Early on, Hartigan had rejected the masculinizing heroics of abstracted imagery—a phallic form at the left, an embracing figure of Joan stands at the right, holding her shield and spear Ab-Ex as practiced by de Kooning and Pollock, and she gradu- From top: Grace Hartigan, Reisterstown Mall, 1965. Oil on canvas, 80 × 102 in. Perry Collection.; Grace Hartigan, Frank O’Hara, 1926–1966, couple at the right, a grimacing head and a pineapple-like form and surveying a landscape populated by real and imaginary ally transformed their language into a figurative celebration of the 1966. Oil on linen, 80 1/8 × 80 in. Courtesy of the Smithsonian American in the center. Their disparities of scale as well as their shifting animals, whose firm but fluent contours suggest a children’s women of history, both ancient and modern. In the 1980s, she Art Museum, Gift of Grace Hartigan, 1967.129.

32 — GRACE HARTIGAN AND HELENE HERZBRUN GRACE HARTIGAN AND HELENE HERZBRUN — 33 began to focus thematically on famous and infamous women, harmoniously with large blocks of color that flattened the pic- queens and empresses, and the actresses who played these ture space. In the later 1970s and early 1980s, that balance roles, investing their images with personal meaning. A notable between line and color shifted in the direction of the more example is Greta of 1981 (pl. 10, page 59), which takes as its painterly, as Hartigan began to work more with dripped veils subject Greta Garbo, an iconic movie star of an earlier gener- of diluted pigment to create spatial and emotional effects that ation. The painting clearly proclaims its inspiration in paper doll are more ambiguous. These new techniques, Hartigan later and cut-out costume books, popular collectibles of the period, acknowledged, may have reflected her personal emotional state in which the regalia of a famous woman’s public image was around 1980, as she went on painting throughout her hus- superimposed on a doll-like form.110 Garbo, herself a personi- band’s terminal illness, using line and color to evoke personal fication of androgynous and bisexual appeal in the 1920s and pain. “The drips,” she told me in a 1986 interview, “are like veils ‘30s, is presented by Hartigan in her 1933 movie role as the of tears or like bead curtains that you have to lift or go behind swashbuckling and genderbending seventeenth-century Queen to see the imagery.”114 Christina of Sweden, a strong-willed woman who, like many of Although their styles and formal languages diverged, Harti- the “famous and infamous” women Hartigan chose to portray, gan and Herzbrun often grappled with similar problems in their had paid a price for her intransigence. Hartigan’s pointed refer- work, foremost among them a need to balance the competing ence here to paper-doll cutouts and pin-up costumes effectively values of spontaneity and chance on the one hand and struc- exploits that popular visual form as a cultural signifier to reveal ture and control on the other. Hartigan eventually came to reject Helene Herzbrun, Autumn Landscape, 1957. Oil on canvas, framed: 49 1/2 x Helene Herzbrun, Spring Landscape, 1959. Oil on canvas, framed: the emptiness and dishonesty of female roleplaying and media the notion of improvisational spontaneity that she had inherited 56 1/2 in. Private Collection. 45 3/4 x 48 1/2 in. Private Collection. packaging. “I’m involved with heroines,” Hartigan told an inter- from the first generation of Abstract Expressionists (who had in viewer in 1985, “and the emptiness of that role.”111 turn inherited it from their abstract surrealist forebears), embrac- The societal impact of gender stereotyping and masking on ing instead a personal but nonetheless rigorous standard of process has always been a part of creativity, whether it occurs painters who were Herzbrun’s contemporaries in Washington in women throughout history—an issue that had already surfaced order and structure in her work. “In painting,” she said, “I try to in something so simple as an accidental shift of contour or the 1960s and 1970s, she never rejected her abstract expres- in Grand Street Brides (page 11), Hartigan’s major early paint- make some logic out of the world that has been given to me so radical as images found in blots and drips. It is a source sionist roots and she never abandoned her attachment to ing of 1954112—was an important and recurring concern and in chaos.”115 And in one of her earliest statements about her and expander of forms. nature as a stimulus for her art. While not completely untouched source of imagery for Hartigan throughout her career. As late goals as a painter, she wrote in 1956 that “the rawness must But in a later and more private statement about her ongo- by the newer movements that came and went around her over as 1998, she told an interviewer: “If I can change… the way the be resolved into form and unity; without the ‘rage for order’ how ing struggle with the issue, she wrote in her journal in 1981: the decades, she never chose to limit or define herself as a world regards women as dolls and… empty-headed actresses, can there be art?”116 “As I look around at all the false starts in the studio… I see my member or a follower of any one of them. if I can make marvelous paintings that glorify images of woman, For Herzbrun, that same dilemma, in both formal and inconsistency, my dilemma—love of the spontaneous unpre- This remarkable independence of spirit and ability to fol- then I feel that I have done a pretty good job. For humanity metaphysical terms, was longer-lived and less easily resolved. dictable paint—touch vs. that need for clarity in structure at low her own path were, again, qualities that Herzbrun shared and for women.”113 Even though the word “feminism” and its Believing in the 1970s that she had found an answer to it in the least—classic vs expressionist again.”117 with Hartigan. From decade to decade, both constantly exper- political ramifications would have remained anathema to her, medium of monotype, “the perfect combination of control and For Herzbrun, as for Hartigan, Abstract Expressionism was imented and evolved as artists, never choosing to stay long such a statement might be said to reflect the latent feminism chance” she wrote in a statement that accompanied an exhi- the primary context and catalyst for her early work. Also like enough with any single “look” or method to produce what of Hartigan’s attitudes and insights, which she expressed with bition of her monotypes at the Jefferson Place Gallery in 1974: Hartigan, she maintained her identification with the movement, critics at the time might have recognized as a signature style ever-increasing clarity and self-consciousness in her later work. The painting I do on a surface of glass I control. What as a “second generation” Ab-Ex painter, even though she rad- (a circumstance to which Hartigan’s lack of critical attention In Hartigan’s paintings of the 1970s, such as Joan of presents itself when the paper is pulled away is the unex- ically grew and transformed the style on her own terms over in her later years has been partly attributed.118) They shared, Arc, her drawing was clear and emphatic, yet interacted pected tempered by expectation. Discovery emerging from the course of her career. Unlike the Minimalist and Color Field too, an ability to take their visual and emotional responses to

34 — GRACE HARTIGAN AND HELENE HERZBRUN GRACE HARTIGAN AND HELENE HERZBRUN — 35 life experiences—urban spaces, popular culture, and the old The work of the late 1950s evolves toward an increas- masters for Hartigan, and a wide range of expressive moments ingly confident and forceful application of pigment, with broad in nature for Herzbrun—and transform those remembered strokes of paint overlapping and moving aggressively across responses into the pictorial poetry of their paintings. larger horizontal canvases that continue, ever more abstractly, Over the course of her career, Herzbrun evolved a dynamic to evoke the landscape. Paintings such as Landscape (Rising but also lyrical and intensely personal form of pure abstrac- from Purple), from Herzbrun’s 1960 solo show at the Poindexter tion, which grew from and spoke to her shifting moods and Gallery in New York, and Untitled (Blue Landscape), also from responses to the cycles of about 1960 (pls. 14 and 15, life in nature. “Exploring and pages 64–65), are compara- unifying the possibilities of ble, as powerful and accom- gestural action painting and plished abstractions, to the of color sensation,” her col- kind of work that Hartigan league Ron Haynie observed, was also doing at around she built “an art that suc- this same time (for example, Helene Herzbrun, Like Thunder, c. 1965. Acrylic on canvas, framed: Helene Herzbrun, Aeroplat, 1970. Acrylic on canvas, 70 3/4 × 74 1/2 × cessfully harmonized the Snow Angel, pl. 2, page 51). 52 × 52 1/8 × 1 5/8 in., image: 50 3/4 × 51 1/8 in. American University 1 1/4 in., image: 70 × 73 3/4 in. American University Museum, Gift of two poles of the Abstract In paintings of the mid Museum, Bequest of Philip Herzbrun, 1995.6.14. Roger S. and Belle O. Kuhn, 1984.5. Expressionist movement.”119 1960s such as Storm Altered The evolution of her work is (Colorado Series) and Like Among the paintings on exhibit here from the early 1970s presented in this show by Thunder (pls.16 and 17, are several exceptionally innovative works that Herzbrun referred a selection of paintings that pages 66–67), the gestural to as her “Color Sweeps.”120 In these, the gestural brushstrokes range from her early abstract activity of Herzbrun’s brush- increase dramatically in breadth and scale; some morph into expressionist landscapes of work is now balanced by stains; and the random drips of the earlier work resolve into an the late 1950s to the melting the interplay of more numer- occasional, dynamic, but carefully placed and purposeful “zip.” geometries of her Greek-in- ous, smaller and more active Among the most impressive and original of the Color Sweeps spired abstractions of the late Helene Herzbrun, Untitled (Blue Landscape), c. 1960. Oil on canvas, shapes and areas of color. is Aeroplat of 1970 (pl. 19, page 69), in which the exhilarat- framed: 50 5/8 × 58 1/2 × 1 5/8 in., image: 50 × 58 in. American University ‘70s. The earliest, Autumn Museum, Gift of Lynne V. Walker, in Memory of Lois Dean Stout, 1997.3.2. These create new compo- ing experience of flight is conveyed by broad diagonal swaths Landscape of 1957 and sitional tensions in her work of brilliant color, which overlap and interact with one another Spring Landscape of 1959, both shown at her 1959 exhibition and a spatial dynamism that complements and forcefully con- to define space and suggest movement. Never a hard-edge at the Corcoran, already proclaim her strengths as an assured veys the dramatic weather and atmospheric phenomena that painter, Herzbrun’s exuberant and manifestly handmade Color and subtle colorist. Their gestural mark-making in a controlled she now sought out and responded to as inspirations for her Sweeps allowed her to conceptualize and image space through but referential abstract space moves from the seasonally evoc- art. In the work of the late 1960s and early 1970s, those smaller dramatic juxtapositions of intense but tonally modulated hues, ative, scribbled brushstrokes of reds, yellows, and browns that shapes coalesce into larger and more focused areas of intense in a manner that was both dramatic and skillfully controlled. Helene Herzbrun, Storm Altered (Colorado Series), 1965. Acrylic on paper, framed: 20 5/8 × 25 3/4 × 1 1/4 in., image: 15 1/2 × 20 1/2 in. dominate the fading greens of an autumnal landscape (pl. 12, color. These emphasize the overall gestalt of Herzbrun’s com- Herzbrun’s “Color Sweeps” of the early 1970s have pas- American University Museum, Gift of Philip Herzbrun, 1991.25.4. page 62) to the more broadly brushed areas of tonally diverse positions as she skillfully, and sometimes playfully, juxtaposes sion, one of the major qualities differentiating her works from blues, greens and lilac-pinks, which suggest the budding resur- the experiences of flatness and controlled spatial illusionism in those of the post-painterly Washington Color School. Her “color gence and reborn freshness of springtime (pl. 13, page 63). her canvases. sweeps” are never limited by the formulaic symmetries often

36 — GRACE HARTIGAN AND HELENE HERZBRUN GRACE HARTIGAN AND HELENE HERZBRUN — 37 found in the work of such contemporaneous artists as Kenneth Noland, Gene Davis, or even Morris Lewis. Each of Herzbrun’s paintings is a purely abstract evocation of a unique sensory experience and never a formal exercise. Even though the physi- cality of the landscapes that inspired her is in no way visibly rep- resented in her paintings, the emotions that those experiences in nature had evoked remain, made visible and palpable by the color and the intensity of the artist’s richly variegated brushwork. The experience of the ski slopes in Colorado inspired two of Herzbrun’s most striking and clearly related “Color Sweeps” of the early 1970s. Glacial Ascent of 1972 (pl. 20, page 70) features broadly brushed vertical strokes of icy blue pigment that “sweep” up along the full height of the canvas to suggest, subliminally, the experience of ascending a mountain slope, while the area of vivid red in the lower right hand corner both anchors the composition and provides the viewer with a point of Helene Herzbrun, Glacial Sun, c. 1972. Acrylic on canvas, Helene Herzbrun, Vail, c. 1974. Acrylic on canvas, framed: 49 × 51 1/8 × 1 3/8 physical access. Displaying an evocative juxtaposition of tech- framed: 50 1/4 × 40 1/4 × 1 1/2 in., image: 49 5/8 × 39 5/8 in., canvas size: 48 × 50 × 1 in. American University Museum, Bequest of Philip niques—techniques of brushing, staining, and controlled, sim- in. American University Museum, Bequest of Philip Herzbrun, Herzbrun, 1995.6.16. 1995.6.18. ulated dripping—the canvas creates an atmosphere redolent of icy air and suggestive of a soaring ascent along a slippery glacial landscape; and it does so abstractly, through the assured several of the paths that she would explore over the coming response of the painting’s smaller forms and larger color areas manipulation of the artist’s formal means. In Glacial Sun (pl. 21, decade. Its large areas of maximally saturated color in a con- to the canvas’s rectilinear shape. page 71), surely conceived as a companion piece, the poetic trolled space offer a very different visual experience from the Herzbrun spent part of her sabbatical year in 1975/76 subtlety of atmosphere and illumination are conveyed through Helene Herzbrun, Glacial Ascent, 1972. Acrylic on canvas, framed: 50 × work of the mid sixties. In Calliope, vivid reds and blues of vary- in Greece, where this new structural concern was brought a series of stained purple transparencies, which play against 40 in. Private Collection. ing opacities and transparencies are carefully calibrated and more explicitly to fruition. The significant body of work that the blinding golden light of the rectangular sun at the upper left compositionally locked into place by a single touch of comple- resulted from that experience is represented here by Stones and the zip of white pigment that dramatically centers the com- mentary green that floats in the painting’s upper right quadrant. at Sounion of 1976 and Entrances of 1977 (pls. 23 and 24, position. A slightly later painting, entitled Vail, c. 1974 (pl. 22, Its expansive areas of color look forward to the broader gestural pages 73–74), where remnants of a decaying classical structure page 72), evokes the same geographic region of icy mountain sweeps and stains of pigment that will characterize the “Color are preserved but also revived in modern terms by the artist’s slopes and blinding white snow, but now through an astound- Sweeps” of the early 1970s. The painting also suggests Herz- lyrical palette and brushwork: Herzbrun’s Greek-inspired works, ingly minimalist composition of a very few stained sweeps of brun’s newly awakening taste for the possibilities of a poeticized described in her journal as “geometry and ambiguity paired,”121 gray, red, and blue-black pigment that diagonally straddle the geometry, which would not fully emerge in her work until her trip appeared in several one-person shows in the later 1970s, at the upper left corner of an almost square, “snowy”—white canvas. to Greece in 1975. In fact, Calliope and Vail are both paintings Corcoran Gallery in 1976, and at the Jack Rasmussen Gallery in Helene Herzbrun, Entrances, An earlier painting of 1969, Calliope (pl. 18, page 68), 1977. Acrylic on canvas, framed: that signal this latent interest: implied in Vail by the way the Washington, DC and the Crapo Gallery at the Swain School of named for the Greek muse of eloquence and epic poetry, is 52 5/8 × 52 3/4 × 1 5/8 in., color sweeps grow out of and give visual prominence to the Art in New Bedford Massachusetts in 1978. In his introduction image: 52 × 52 in. American in many ways a pivotal work for Herzbrun that foreshadows University Museum, X1639. rectilinear shape of the canvas; and in Calliope by the echoing to the Swain School show, Nicholas Kilmer spoke thoughtfully

38 — GRACE HARTIGAN AND HELENE HERZBRUN GRACE HARTIGAN AND HELENE HERZBRUN — 39 and movingly about the multi-dimensional complexity of Throughout her career, Herzbrun’s titles for her paintings preoccupations. Herzbrun’s Roses Past—“dead roses trying to these paintings: had referred sometimes directly, sometimes obliquely to the be awkward but so flamboyantly painted,” as she confided to The dissolution of geometrical form caused by intensity places and experiences for which her paintings became pow- her journal125—summon both nostalgia and undying hope. Their of light; the tenuous nature of the experience of transpar- erful abstract evocations—dead leaves rustling in the breeze loosely horizontal arrangement against an implied landscape, ency, opacity; the contemplation of the edge between the of an autumn landscape, diffuse sunlight shimmering off glacial with its pink and purple-streaked sunset sky, suggests formal solid and the infinite where one cannot be sure which is the ice; moonlight reflecting off ancient stones and facades. Her analogies—but on an even more dramatic scale—with the late solid, which the infinite. These seem purely “visual” con- compositions and brushwork function as responsive musi- work of Arshile Gorky and with what that artist had been able cerns until one stops, looks again, thinks again about the cal forms. The pictorial and the sensory combine to create to do with line and color to evoke personal pain. intellectual implications, the emotional impact of these ideas a charged emotionalism in her work that is poetic, but also As artists, both Hartigan and Herzbrun adhered to the tra- as processes… restrained, increasingly freed over time from the artificial angst ditional media of painting, printmaking, and collage, even as the The pun in the titles Entrances is intentional. OPENINGS of its abstract expressionist roots. primacy of these forms of expression was undergoing serious : AMAZES In a journal entry from the last days of 1979, Herzbrun challenges in the postmodern era. And both found new and The first word talks of the visual phenomena of planes looked back over the work of that decade and recognized her important ways of making those traditional media responsive and alleys. The second speaks of an intensely vivid state of oscillation between putting “my faith in spontaneity,” as in her to their own personalities, visions, and experiences, thereby mind… Must be entranced, or entered by them.122 monotypes of 1974, to “paintings more structured and geome- imbuing them with new life. Upon leaving the New York stage try more explicit,” a shorthand reference to her Greek paintings and arriving in Baltimore, Hartigan had continued to identify with of the following years.123 Inspired by a recent visit to American the mainstream world that had once welcomed and celebrated University by Philip Guston—whose courage to grow and rad- her. She largely avoided the then, circa 1960, small and insular ically change his work she admired—she now looked to the art worlds of the DC and Baltimore region. Herzbrun, on the future: “So in 1980 the motto derives from Guston’s talk,” she other hand, always more at home and rooted in that milieu, wrote. “Trust your intuition—that’s all you gain with time.”124 worked cooperatively with other artists to build and develop In the early 1980s, the permission Herzbrun now gave her- for the region an alternative network, one that would “make a self to follow her instincts did indeed lead her art in new direc- statement of Washington art.” “Down with provincialism!” as tions, an evolution cut tragically short by the onset of illness in she wrote both hopefully and defiantly in a letter to Tworkov 1981 and her death from cancer on March 14, 1984. In these in 1957.126 But for both, their “not New York” status eventually last years, a remission allowed her to go on working and even brought them creative freedom. It allowed them to find inspi- traveling; and when she could no longer paint, she devoted ration for their art in what was most personal to their own rich herself to collage, as Matisse had done, producing a series of range of experiences—in nature, in art, in travel, in poetry and extraordinary works that were exhibited posthumously at AU in history—and led to a gradual transformation of the language in 1984. Mortality, the cycles of life and death in nature, now of Abstract Expressionism into uniquely personal and revitalized inevitably took on more personal meaning as she confronted forms in their hands. her terminal condition. The poignance of Roses Past (pl. 25, page 75) exemplifies this mood in the work of the early 1980s, and it displays, in the unprecedented painterliness and exu- From top: Helene Herzbrun, Calliope, 1969. Acrylic on canvas, framed: 51 3/4 x 51 3/4 in. Courtesy of Elisabeth French. Helene Herzbrun, Stones at Sounion, 1976. Acrylic on canvas, framed: berant mark-making of its execution, the newly unrestrained 53 1/4 × 54 7/8 × 1 1/2 in., image: 52 1/4 × 53 7/8 in. American University Helene Herzbrun, Roses Past, 1981. Acrylic on board, 36 × 33 in. Museum, FIC.2018.100.1. formal language that she now called upon to express these Private Collection.

40 — GRACE HARTIGAN AND HELENE HERZBRUN GRACE HARTIGAN AND HELENE HERZBRUN — 41 ENDNOTES

1 For a relevant analysis of that esthetic, see 10 Journals 1951–1955, entry of February 19, 23 In 1969, she leased her second and more permanent 36 In the 1950s, she took the name of her first husband, 41 Exhibition announcement and lists, Helene 54 On this phenomenon, see Diane F. Johnson, “Art in Ann Eden Gibson, Abstract Expressionism, 1954, 126. On Barr’s enthusiasm for “Persian Baltimore studio in Fells Point, when the Calvert Robert McKinsey, and signed her work as Helene Herzbrun Papers, American University Archives, Washington: Twenty Years,” in Washington: Twenty Other Politics (New Haven and London: Jacket” and his active efforts to acquire it for the Street building was about to be razed and remained McKinsey until her second marriage, in November of Box 2, Folder: “Poindexter Gallery 1960.” Years, exh. cat., The Baltimore Museum of Art, Yale University Press, 1997), especially 1–17. museum, which gave Hartigan “a real boost in there until 2004 (Curtis, Restless Ambition, 244, 299). 1961, to Georgetown University English Professor, 1970, 8–12; and Clement Greenberg, “Louis and morale, just when I needed it very badly,” see Philip Herzbrun. Thereafter, she briefly signed her 42 Letter from Herzbrun to Tworkov, postmarked Noland,” Art International, vol. 4, no. 5 (1960): 27–28. 2 Grace Hartigan’s life and work have generated the journal entry for May 3, 1953, 77–78. 24 “Oral History Interview with Grace Hartigan,” Julie work as McKinsey/Herzbrun, but quickly transitioned October 12, 1960. The Tworkov Papers, Archives an impressive amount of literature. See the Haifley, interviewer. May 10, 1979. Smithsonian to her new married name, Helene Herzbrun, with of American Art, Box 3, Folder 17, 1960. 55 The painting was The Vendor of 1958, which she thorough bibliography compiled by her most 11 Dorothy Seiberling, “Women Artists in Ascendance: Archives of American Art. See the transcript on line which she signed her work for the remainder of her designated “in memory of Jackson Pollock.” See 43 recent biographer, Cathy Curtis, Restless Ambition: Young Group Reflects Lively Virtues of U.S. Painting,” at https://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/interviews/oral- career. In this essay, she is referred to throughout Dore Ashton, “Two One–Man Displays Open Curtis, Restless Ambition, 212 and 358 note 96. Grace Hartigan, Painter (Oxford and New York: Life (May 13, 1957): 74–77; this quote, 75. history-interview-grace-hartigan-12326#transcript. as Herzbrun, the name by which she was known Here,” The New York Times (May 12, 1960): 41. 56 Oxford University Press) 2015, pp. 381–95. for the longest part of her professional life. Specifically, Hartigan told the interviewer that the 12 “Miss Hartigan and Her Canvas: The Rawness and 25 Curtis, Restless Ambition, 209–10. 44 Letter from Herzbrun to Tworkov, dated July 14 and Gres Gallery show had been the “first and only time 3 On these issues, see Grace Hartigan and the Poets: the Vast.” Newsweek (May 11, 1959): 13–14. Other 37 In a letter postmarked June 25, 1957 to postmarked July 15, 1958. The Tworkov Papers, I’ve ever shown in Washington. I’ve never shown 26 Paintings and Prints, catalogue of an exhibition at popular magazine coverage from this period includes: John Canaday, “Sometimes You Feel Sorry,” Tworkov, she speaks about teaching for the Archives of American Art, Box 3, Folder 15, 1958. since.” But, since Hartigan did have a show in Skidmore College, with introduction by Terrence Charlotte Willard, “Women of American Art,” Look The New York Times (March 21, 1965): 469. first time in that summer session and about her Washington at American University’s Watkins Art 45 Diggory (Saratoga Springs, New York: Schick Art (September 27, 1960): 70–75; and Jean Lipman and difficulties in acclimating to it. The Jack Tworkov Letter from Herzbrun to Tworkov, postmarked Gallery in 1975 (see below), I interpret her statement 27 Gallery, 1993); and Terrence Diggory, “Questions Cleve Gray, “The Amazing Inventiveness of Women Nemser, Art Talk, 161. papers, Digitized Collection, Washington DC, August 9, 1958. The Tworkov Papers, Archives to mean that she had had no commercial gallery of Identity in Oranges by Frank O’Hara and Grace Painters,” Cosmopolitan (October 1961): 62–69. The Archives of American Art, Box 3, Folder of American Art, Box 3, Folder 15, 1958. representation there. See Haifley, “Oral History 28 Luther Young, “Grace Hartigan took the big Hartigan,” Art Journal (Winter 1993) 46 ff. 14: McKinsey, Helene (Herzbrun), 1957. Interview with Grace Hartigan,” not paginated. 46 13 Robert Mattison, Grace Hartigan: A Painter’s chance – and won,” The Baltimore Sun, Letter postmarked November 19, 1958. 4 Grace Hartigan, The Journals of Grace World (New York: Hudson Hills, 1990), 53; September 13, 1981; as cited by Curtis, 38 The important story of the Jefferson Place Gallery, The Tworkov Papers, Archives of American 57 Haifley, “Oral History Interview with Hartigan 1951–1955, William T. La Moy and as cited by Curtis, Restless Ambition, 168. Restless Ambition, 240 and 364 n.32. its formation, contributions, and legacy, is told by Art, Box 3, Folder 15, 1958. Grace Hartigan,” not paginated. Joseph P. McCaffrey, eds. (Syracuse, NY: John Anderson, “Making A Scene: The Jefferson 14 29 On Hartigan as a teacher, see Curtis, 47 The Helene Herzbrun Papers, American 58 Syracuse University Press, 2009), 46, 108; Allen Barber, “Making Some Marks,” Arts Magazine Place Gallery and Washington, DC,” in Making Herzbrun’s work, on the other hand, was not Restless Ambition, 219–36. University Archives, Box 2: Journal 2 (October cited hereafter as Journals 1951–1955. 48, no. 9 (June 1974): 49–51, this quote, 51. A Scene: The Jefferson Place Gallery, exhibition collected by local museums. Presently, only one 31, 1981 – ). The Corcoran Gallery of Art public museum in DC holds a work by her, a 1974 30 catalogue (Washington, DC, American University 5 15 Curtis, Restless Ambition, 229. show to which Herzbrun refers is Ten Plus Artist’s statement for the exhibition catalogue, 12 Journals 1951–1955, 102. Museum at the Katzen Arts Center: Alper Initiative monotype that she donated to SAAM in 1974. Ten Plus Ten (June 18–August 15, 1982) . Americans, edited by Dorothy C. Miller (New York: for Washington Art, 2017) 4–23; this quote, p. 4. The bulk of her work not in private hands was 16 31 For this quote and other statements about her Museum of Modern Art, 1956), 53. On the genesis Journals 1951–1955. Southampton, bequeathed to American University and is now community of friends and colleagues in Baltimore, 48 Journals 1951–1955, 147–48. of “Grand Street Brides,” see Journals 1951–1955, July 28 and August 5, 1954, 147–48. 39 Tworkov papers, The Archives of American Art, part of the permanent collection of its Museum. see Haifley, “Oral History Interview with Grace 128–33, and Curtis, Restless Ambition, 125–26. Box 3, Folder 14: McKinsey, Helene (Herzbrun), 49 17 James Thrall Soby, “Interview with Grace Hartigan,” Hartigan,” May 10, 1979. Smithsonian Archives of James Thrall Soby, “Interview with Grace 59 1957, 14–15. Letter from Herzbrun, postmarked January 6 For more on the rupture and its ramifications, Saturday Review 40 (October 5, 1957): 26–27. American Art, not paginated. Available online at Hartigan,” Saturday Review 40 (October 10, 1958. The Tworkov Papers, Archives of https://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/interviews/oral- 5, 1957): 26–27; these quotes, 26. see Curtis, Restless Ambition, 96–97, 40 On the role played by Tworkov with his dealer, American Art, Box 3, Folder 15, 1958. 18 126, 295, and 328 note 66. Cindy Nemser, Art Talk: Conversations history-interview-grace-hartigan-12326#transcript. Eleanor Ward, Director of the Stable Gallery, see 50 with 12 Women Artists (New York: Charles On the variety of the art shown at the Jefferson 60 Soby, “Interview with Grace Hartigan,” 32 Herzbbrun’s letters dated January 27, February 7 Scribner’s Sons, 1975), 162. Curtis, Restless Ambition, 229 and 362 n.67. Place Gallery and its outreach beyond Washington, Journals 1951–1955, 29–30. 27, April 9, and May 20, 1958. The Jack Tworkov Saturday Review 40 (October 5, 1957): 26–27. see Anderson, “Making A Scene,” 13–17. 33 papers, Archives of American Art, Box 3, Folder 8 19 Journals 1951–1955. Entry for Vicki Goldberg, “ART: Grace Hartigan Still 61 Journals 1951–1955, 33–34. 15: 1958. Her renewed and unsuccessful efforts Correspondence from 1972 and 1974 September 9, 1954, 148. Hates Pop,” The New York Times, (Sunday, 51 Paul Richard, “A Young Color Painter Makes to find a New York dealer after the demise of the in the artist’s files for Herzbrun and 9 Journals 1951–1955, 50. On Greenberg’s August 15, 1993): H30–31; this quote, 30. History,” The Washington Post (May 3, 1970): G2. Hartigan, Office of the Registrar, American 20 Jefferson Place Gallery in 1974 are reflected in her subsequent denigration of her work and his Curtis, Restless Ambition, 180–81. University Museum, Washington DC. 34 correspondence with the Livingston Learmouth 52 ongoing efforts to undermine and diminish her, S. Westfall, “Six of the New York School Look Letters dated May 5–7, 1970. Herzbrun 21 Gallery (July 1976), the Barbara Fendrick Gallery see her entry for March 9, 1954, 128–29. Nemser, Art Talk, 166. Back,” Art in America, 73 (June 1985): 119. Papers, American University Archives, 62 The gift from the Academy was finalized early in (October 1976) and the Betty Parsons Gallery Box 1: “Correspondence, incoming and 1975 by the succeeding chair, Robert D’Arista, 22 “Meet the Artist: Grace Hartigan.” Smithsonian 35 Quoted by Goldberg, “Grace (June 1978). See the Helene Herzbrun papers, outgoing (2 folders), 1970–1984,” folder 1. while Herzbrun was on sabbatical in Greece. American Art Museum, Media Series: Meet Hartigan Still Hates Pop,” 31. American University Archive, Washington DC, The correspondence is preserved in the painting’s the Artist Videos. https://americanart.si.edu/ Box 1, Folder: “Correspondence 1970–1984.” 53 Journal entry, 1980. Herzbrun Papers, file, acquisition number 1975.6.1, Office of the videos/meet-artist-grace-hartigan-154369. American University Archives, Box Registrar, American University Museum. Uploaded to the series: January 16, 2009. 2: Journal 1 (1974–82), p. 92.

42 — GRACE HARTIGAN AND HELENE HERZBRUN GRACE HARTIGAN AND HELENE HERZBRUN — 43 63 The paintings were: Spanish Thanksgiving (1961); 74 Nemser, Art Talk, 167–72; these quotes, 169. 89 Curtis, Restless Ambition, 231. 105 Robert Mattison, Grace Hartigan: A Painter’s 119 Ron Haynie, “Helene McKinsey Herzbrun (1922–84): Barbie (1964); Trick or Treat (1965); Male Image World (New York: Hudson Hills, 1990), 70. The Late Collages,” Press Release dated March (1966); Ravencrest (1969); Beware of the Gifts 75 Nemser, Art Talk, 151; also, Haifley, “Oral 90 Curtis, Restless Ambition, 231 and 363 note 84. As cited by Curtis, Restless Ambition, 203. 23, 1984, for an exhibition at The Watkins Gallery, (1971); and Coloring Book of Ancient Egypt (1973). History Interview with Grace Hartigan,” not American University, April 1–21, 1984, 2. 91 See the exhibition mailer and checklist, Office of paginated. The issue is further discussed A. Barber, “Making Some Marks,” 106 Hartigan’s statement for the exhibition the Registrar, American University Museum. by Curtis, Restless Ambition, 74–75. Arts Magazine, 48, no.9 (June 1974): 50. announcement, “Three American Painters,” 120 Haynie, “Paintings from the Estate Grand Rapids Art Museum, 1968; cited of Helene Herzbrun,” 1988, 2. 92 64 Joan Marter, ed., Women of Abstract 76 For a discussion of such instances of proto- Ron Haynie, “Paintings from the Estate of Helene by Curtis, Restless Ambition, 240. Expressionism, exhibition catalogue (New Haven feminism in the late 1950s and early 60s, see Herzbrun,” press release dated August 29, 1988, 121 Herzbrun Papers, American University and London: Yale University Press, 2016). Daniel Belasco, “See Us Now: The Feminist for an exhibition at The Watkins Gallery, American 107 Haifley, “Oral History Interview with Archives, Box 2: Journal 1 (1974–82), 92. Positions of Helen Frankenthaler and Grace University, September 11– October 1, 1988, p. 1. Grace Hartigan,” not paginated. 65 Wendell P. Bradley, “Don’t Fear to Like Art, Hartigan, 1957–1962,“ Konsthistorisk tidskrift/ 122 Nicholas Kilmer, “Introduction,” Helene Herzbrun 93 Abstractionist Urges,” The Washington Journal of Art History 83:2 (2014): 67–81. Mary Gabriel, Ninth Street Women (New York: 108 Journals 1951–1955, entry of March 31, 1951, 1. – Recent Paintings (Bedford, MA: Swain School Post, January 18, 1960, p. A3. Little Brown and Co., 2018), 705–708. of Design, 1978). Typescript in the Herzbrun 77 Hartigan, Journals 1951–1955, 159. 109 Curtis, Restless Ambition, 125; quoting from the Papers, American University Archives, Box 2. 94 66 Letter postmarked November 12, 1959. Goldberg, “Grace Hartigan Still Hates Pop,” 31. Journals 1951–1955, entry of April 16, 1954, 137. The Tworkov Papers, Archives of American Art, 78 Curtis, Restless Ambition, 134–35. 123 Herzbrun Papers, American University 95 110 Box 3, Folder 16, pp. 27–31; this quote, p. 30. Curtis, Restless Ambition, 152. See for example, Tom Tierney, Glamorous Movie Archives, Box 2: Journal 1 (1974–82), 92. 79 Goldberg, “Grace Hartigan Still Hates Pop,” 31. Stars of the Thirties Paper Dolls (New York: Dover 96 67 Undated letter [1959]. The Tworkov Papers, Hartigan’s Statement for the exhibition Publications, 1978). The paper doll of Garbo in the 124 Ibid., 91. 80 Archives of American Art, Box 3, Folder Hartigan, Journals 1951–1955, 18. catalogue, 12 Americans, (New York: costume of Queen Christina, plate 10, is clearly 125 13, pp. 15–19; this quote, p.16. Museum of Modern Art, 1956), 53. a source of inspiration for Hartigan’s image. Entry dated June 24, 1981. Ibid., 93. 81 Hartigan, Journals 1951–1955, 33. On the 97 126 68 Norma Broude, “American Women Artists of the gendering of abstract painting as male in the Grace Hartigan, Meet the Artist Video, 111 Westfall, “Six of the New York School Look Back,” Tworkov papers, The Archives of Pre-Feminist 1950s and 1960s,” The Power of Ab-Ex world and Hartigan’s defiance of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. 119. American Art, Box 3, Folder 14: McKinsey, Feminist Art: The American Movement of the stereotypes, see Terence Diggory, “Introduction,” Uploaded to the series: January 16, 2009. Helene (Herzbrun), 1957, 14–15. 112 1970s, History and Impact, edited by Norma Hartigan Journals 1951–1955, xix. See Aliza Edelman, “Grace Hartigan’s Grand 98 Ibid. Broude and Mary D. Garrard (New York: Harry Street Brides: The Modern Bride as Mannequin,” 82 Hartigan, Journals 1951–1955,128–29. For Woman’s Art Journal (Fall/Winter 2013): 3–10. N. Abrams, 1994), 12–21, especially 20–21. 99 more on Hartigan’s rupture with Greenberg On the importance of the Pallas Athena paintings for Hartigan, see Belasco, “The 113 69 Joan Marter, “An Interview with Irving and its ramifications, see Curtis, Restless Ned Oldham, “Grace Hartigan.” Black& White, Feminist Positions of Helen Frankenthaler Sandler (February 21, 2013), in Women Ambition, 96–97, 126, 295, and 328 note 66. Birmingham Alabama, June 11, 1998: 29; and Grace Hartigan, 1957–1962,” 74–77. of Abstract Expressionism, 69. as cited by Curtis, Restless Ambition, 291. 83 Curtis, Restless Ambition, 134 and 337 note 68. In 1997, The Birmingham Museum of Art had 100 Curtis, Restless Ambition, 291. 70 Grace Hartigan, Meet the Artist Video, acquired Hartigan’s 1964 painting, Barbie. 84 Haifley, “Oral History Interview with Smithsonian American Art Museum. 101 Jonathan VanDyke, Grace Hartigan: Painting 114 Uploaded to the series: January 16, 2009. Grace Hartigan,” not paginated. Interview with the author, October 11, 1986. See from Popular Culture, Three Decades (Harrisburg, Broude, Grace Hartigan: A Mini-Retrospective, 3. 85 PA: Susquehanna Art Museum, 2000); as 71 As reported by Curtis, Restless Haifley, “Oral History Interview with cited by Curtis, Restless Ambition, 291. 115 Ambition, 231 and 363 note 82. Grace Hartigan,” not paginated. Barber, “Making Some Marks,” 50.

86 102 Haifley, “Oral History Interview with 116 72 Cindy Nemser, Art Talk: Conversations Grace Hartigan, “A Statement,” The Eye of Hartigan’s statement for the exhibition catalogue Grace Hartigan,” not paginated. with 12 Women Artists (New York: Hartigan (Washington DC: The Washington 12 Americans edited by Dorothy C. Miller (New Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1975). Women’s Art Center, 1980), not paginated. York: Museum of Modern Art, 1956), 53. 103 Curtis, Restless Ambition, 188. 87 117 73 Haifley, “Oral History Interview with Grace Curtis, Restless Ambition, 363 note 84. Journal entry dated June 24, 1981. The 104 Gabriel, Ninth Street Women, Hartigan,” May 10, 1979. Smithsonian Archives Helene Herzbrun Papers, American University 88 Norma Broude, Grace Hartigan: A Mini-Retrospective, 706–7. See also Curtis, 203. of American Art. Transcript, not paginated. Archives, Box 2: Journal 1 (1974–82), n.p. 1954–1984, exhibition catalogue, Watkins Art Gallery (Washington, DC: American University, 1987). 118 Goldberg, “Grace Hartigan Still Hates Pop,” 31.

44 — GRACE HARTIGAN AND HELENE HERZBRUN GRACE HARTIGAN AND HELENE HERZBRUN — 45 CHECKLIST

Grace Hartigan, Summer Street, 1956. Oil on canvas, Grace Hartigan, Joan of Arc, 1973. Oil on canvas, Helene Herzbrun, Calliope, 1969. Acrylic on canvas, framed: 81 5/16 × 59 15/16 in. Courtesy of the 78 × 100 in. Courtesy of the Grace Hartigan Estate. framed: 51 3/4 x 51 3/4 in. Courtesy of Elisabeth French. National Gallery of Art, Corcoran Collection (Gift of Dorothy C. Miller), 2014.136.132. Grace Hartigan, Greta, 1981. Oil on canvas, 79 × Helene Herzbrun, Aeroplat, 1970. Acrylic on canvas, 63 in. Courtesy of the Grace Hartigan Estate. 70 3/4 × 74 1/2 × 1 1/4 in., image: 70 × 73 3/4 in. Grace Hartigan, Snow Angel, 1960. Oil on canvas, American University Museum, Gift of Roger S. and 69 × 72 in. Perry Collection. Grace Hartigan, Untitled, n.d. Mixed media on paper, Belle O. Kuhn, 1984.5. 10 3/4 x 17 in. Perry Collection. Grace Hartigan, Spanish Thanksgiving, 1961. Oil on Helene Herzbrun, Glacial Ascent, 1972. Acrylic on canvas, framed: 57 1/2 × 54 1/8 × 1 1/2 in., image: Helene Herzbrun, Autumn Landscape, 1957. Oil on canvas, framed: 50 × 40 in. Private Collection. 56 7/8 × 53 3/8 in. American University Museum, canvas, framed: 49 1/2 x 56 1/2 in. Private Collection. Museum purchase, 1969.4. Helene Herzbrun, Glacial Sun, c. 1972. Acrylic on Helene Herzbrun, Spring Landscape, 1959. Oil on canvas, framed: 50 1/4 × 40 1/4 × 1 1/2 in., image: Grace Hartigan, Pallas Athena--Earth, 1961. Oil canvas, framed: 45 3/4 x 48 1/2 in. Private Collection. 49 5/8 × 39 5/8 in. American University Museum, on canvas, 64 1/8 × 52 1/8 in. Courtesy of the Bequest of Philip Herzbrun, 1995.6.18. Helene Herzbrun, Landscape (Rising from Purple), c. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of S.C. 1958–1960. Oil on canvas, framed: 51 1/8 × 69 × 1 Johnson & Son, Inc., 1969.47.17. Helene Herzbrun, Vail, c. 1974. Acrylic on canvas, 1/2 in., image: 50 1/4 × 68 1/4 in. American University framed: 49 × 51 1/8 × 1 3/8 in., canvas size: 48 × 50 Grace Hartigan, Marilyn, 1962. Oil on canvas, Museum, Gift of Lynne V. Walker, in Memory of Lois × 1 in. American University Museum, Bequest of 71 × 55 in. Perry Collection. Dean Stout, 1997.3.1. Philip Herzbrun, 1995.6.16.

Grace Hartigan, Reisterstown Mall, 1965. Oil on Helene Herzbrun, Untitled (Blue Landscape), c. 1960. Helene Herzbrun, Stones at Sounion, 1976. Acrylic on canvas, 80 × 102 in. Perry Collection. Oil on canvas, framed: 50 5/8 × 58 1/2 × 1 5/8 in., canvas, framed: 53 1/4 × 54 7/8 × 1 1/2 in., image: image: 50 × 58 in. American University Museum, Gift 52 1/4 × 53 7/8 in. American University Museum, Grace Hartigan, Frank O’Hara, 1926–1966, 1966. of Lynne V. Walker, in Memory of Lois Dean Stout, FIC.2018.100.1. Oil on linen, 80 1/8 × 80 in. Courtesy of the 1997.3.2. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Grace Helene Herzbrun, Entrances, 1977. Acrylic on canvas, Hartigan, 1967.129. Helene Herzbrun, Storm Altered (Colorado Series), framed: 52 5/8 × 52 3/4 × 1 5/8 in., image: 52 × 52 in. 1965. Acrylic on paper, framed: 20 5/8 × 25 3/4 × American University Museum, X1639. Grace Hartigan, Beware of the Gifts, 1971. Oil on 1 1/4 in., image: 15 1/2 × 20 1/2 in. American canvas, framed: 79 3/4 × 103 × 1 1/2 in., image: University Museum, Gift of Philip Herzbrun, 1991.25.4. Helene Herzbrun, Roses Past, 1981. Acrylic on board, 79 1/4 × 102 1/2 in. American University Museum, 36 × 33 in. Private Collection. Gift of the American Academy of Arts and Letters Helene Herzbrun, Like Thunder, c. 1965. Acrylic on (Childe Hassam Fund), 1975.6.1. canvas, framed: 52 × 52 1/8 × 1 5/8 in., image: 50 3/4 × 51 1/8 in. American University Museum, Bequest of Philip Herzbrun, 1995.6.14.

46 — GRACE HARTIGAN AND HELENE HERZBRUN GRACE HARTIGAN AND HELENE HERZBRUN — 47 GRACE HARTIGAN (1922–2008) PLATE 2: Grace Hartigan, Snow Angel, 1960. Oil on canvas, 69 × 72 in. Perry Collection.

PLATE 1: Grace Hartigan, Summer Street, 1956. Oil on canvas, framed: 81 5/16 × 59 15/16 in. Courtesy of the National Gallery of Art, Corcoran Collection (Gift of Dorothy C. Miller), 2014.136.132.

50 — GRACE HARTIGAN AND HELENE HERZBRUN GRACE HARTIGAN AND HELENE HERZBRUN — 51 PLATE 3: Grace Hartigan, Spanish Thanksgiving, 1961. Oil on canvas, framed: 57 1/2 × 54 1/8 × 1 1/2 in., image: 56 7/8 × 53 3/8 in. PLATE 4: Grace Hartigan, Pallas Athena--Earth, 1961. Oil on canvas, 64 1/8 × 52 1/8 in. Courtesy of the Smithsonian American University Museum, Museum purchase, 1969.4. American Art Museum, Gift of S.C. Johnson & Son, Inc., 1969.47.17.

52 — GRACE HARTIGAN AND HELENE HERZBRUN GRACE HARTIGAN AND HELENE HERZBRUN — 53 PLATE 6: Grace Hartigan, Reisterstown Mall, 1965. Oil on canvas, 80 × 102 in. Perry Collection.

PLATE 5: Grace Hartigan, Marilyn, 1962. Oil on canvas, 71 × 55 in. Perry Collection.

54 — GRACE HARTIGAN AND HELENE HERZBRUN GRACE HARTIGAN AND HELENE HERZBRUN — 55 PLATE 8: Grace Hartigan, Beware of the Gifts, 1971. Oil on canvas, framed: 79 3/4 × 103 × 1 1/2 in., image: 79 1/4 × 102 1/2 in. American University Museum, Gift of the American Academy of Arts and Letters (Childe Hassam Fund), 1975.6.1.

PLATE 7: Grace Hartigan, Frank O’Hara, 1926–1966, 1966. Oil on linen, 80 1/8 × 80 in. Courtesy of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Grace Hartigan, 1967.129.

56 — GRACE HARTIGAN AND HELENE HERZBRUN GRACE HARTIGAN AND HELENE HERZBRUN — 57 PLATE 9: Grace Hartigan, Joan of Arc, 1973. Oil on canvas, 78 × 100 in. Courtesy of the Grace Hartigan Estate.

PLATE 10: Grace Hartigan, Greta, 1981. Oil on canvas, 79 × 63 in. Courtesy of the Grace Hartigan Estate.

58 — GRACE HARTIGAN AND HELENE HERZBRUN GRACE HARTIGAN AND HELENE HERZBRUN — 59 HELENE HERZBRUN (1922–1984)

PLATE 11: Grace Hartigan, Untitled, n.d. Mixed media on paper, 10 ¾ x 17 in. Perry Collection.

60 — GRACE HARTIGAN AND HELENE HERZBRUN PLATE 12: Helene Herzbrun, Autumn Landscape, 1957. Oil on canvas, framed: 49 1/2 x 56 1/2 in. Private Collection.

PLATE 13: Helene Herzbrun, Spring Landscape, 1959. Oil on canvas, framed: 45 3/4 x 48 1/2 in. Private Collection.

62 — GRACE HARTIGAN AND HELENE HERZBRUN GRACE HARTIGAN AND HELENE HERZBRUN — 63 PLATE 14: Helene Herzbrun, Landscape (Rising from Purple), c. 1958-1960. Oil on canvas, framed: 51 1/8 × 69 × 1 1/2 in., image: 50 1/4 × 68 1/4 in. American University Museum, Gift of Lynne V. Walker, in Memory of Lois Dean Stout. 1997.3.1.

PLATE 15: Helene Herzbrun, Untitled (Blue Landscape), c. 1960. Oil on canvas, framed: 50 5/8 × 58 1/2 × 1 5/8 in., image: 50 × 58 in. American University Museum, Gift of Lynne V. Walker, in Memory of Lois Dean Stout, 1997.3.2.

64 — GRACE HARTIGAN AND HELENE HERZBRUN GRACE HARTIGAN AND HELENE HERZBRUN — 65 PLATE 16: Helene Herzbrun, Storm Altered (Colorado Series), 1965. Acrylic on paper, framed: 20 5/8 × 25 3/4 × 1 1/4 in., image: 15 1/2 × 20 1/2 in. American University Museum, Gift of Philip Herzbrun, 1991.25.4.

PLATE 17: Helene Herzbrun, Like Thunder, c. 1965. Acrylic on canvas, framed: 52 × 52 1/8 × 1 5/8 in., image: 50 3/4 × 51 1/8 in. American University Museum, Bequest of Philip Herzbrun, 1995.6.14.

66 — GRACE HARTIGAN AND HELENE HERZBRUN GRACE HARTIGAN AND HELENE HERZBRUN — 67 PLATE 19: Helene Herzbrun, Aeroplat, 1970. Acrylic on canvas, 70 3/4 × 74 1/2 × 1 1/4 in., image: 70 × 73 3/4 in. American University Museum, Gift of Roger S. and Belle O. Kuhn, 1984.5. PLATE 18: Helene Herzbrun, Calliope, 1969. Acrylic on canvas, framed: 51 3/4 x 51 3/4 in. Courtesy of Elisabeth French.

68 — GRACE HARTIGAN AND HELENE HERZBRUN GRACE HARTIGAN AND HELENE HERZBRUN — 69 PLATE 20: Helene Herzbrun, Glacial Ascent, 1972. Acrylic on canvas, framed: 50 × 40 in. Private Collection. PLATE 21: Helene Herzbrun, Glacial Sun, c. 1972. Acrylic on canvas, framed: 50 1/4 × 40 1/4 × 1 1/2 in., image: 49 5/8 × 39 5/8 in. American University Museum, Bequest of Philip Herzbrun, 1995.6.18.

70 — GRACE HARTIGAN AND HELENE HERZBRUN GRACE HARTIGAN AND HELENE HERZBRUN — 71 PLATE 22: Helene Herzbrun, Vail, c. 1974. Acrylic on canvas, framed: 49 × 51 1/8 × 1 3/8 in., canvas size: 48 × 50 × 1 in. American University Museum, PLATE 23: Helene Herzbrun, Stones at Sounion, 1976. Acrylic on canvas, framed: 53 1/4 × 54 7/8 × 1 1/2 in., image: 52 1/4 × 53 7/8 in. American Bequest of Philip Herzbrun, 1995.6.16. University Museum, FIC.2018.100.1.

72 — GRACE HARTIGAN AND HELENE HERZBRUN GRACE HARTIGAN AND HELENE HERZBRUN — 73 PLATE 24: Helene Herzbrun, Entrances, 1977. Acrylic on canvas, framed: 52 5/8 × 52 3/4 × 1 5/8 in., image: 52 × 52 in. American University Museum, PLATE 25: Helene Herzbrun, Roses Past, 1981. Acrylic on board, 36 × 33 in. Private Collection. X1639.

74 — GRACE HARTIGAN AND HELENE HERZBRUN GRACE HARTIGAN AND HELENE HERZBRUN — 75 CURATOR’S BIOGRAPHY

NORMA BROUDE is Professor Emerita of Art History at American University in Washington, DC, where she taught from 1975 to 2011. A specialist in nineteenth-century French and Italian painting, she is known for her critical reassessments of Impressionism in general and the work of Edgar Degas in particular. Her books include The Macchiaioli: Italian Painters of the Nineteenth Century (1987) and Impressionism, A Feminist Reading: The Gendering of Art, Science, and Nature in the Nineteenth Century (1991). Among her edited books are World Impressionism: The International Movement (1990), Gustave Caillebotte and the Fashioning of Identity in Impressionist Paris (2002), and Gauguin’s Challenge: New Perspectives After Postmodernism (2018). She has served as General Editor of The Rizzoli Art Series and as a member of the College Art Association’s Art Bulletin Advisory Committee.

A pioneering and internationally noted feminist art historian, Broude is co-editor (with Mary D. Garrard) and contributor to four influential anthologies of feminist art historical studies, including The Power of Feminist Art: The American Movement of the 1970s, History and Impact (1994). With Garrard, she organized and wrote the catalogue for the exhibition Claiming Space: Some American Feminist Origina- tors, which was shown at the American University Museum in 2007.

Professor Broude has received grants in support of her work from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the U.S. Department of Education, the J. Paul Getty Trust, and the Rockefeller Founda- tion. She has lectured at major museums and universities including the Courtauld Institute of Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the National Gallery of Art, and the Fogg Museum at Harvard. Her articles have appeared in The Art Bulletin, The Burlington Magazine, The Gazette des Beaux-Arts, and other journals.

76 — GRACE HARTIGAN AND HELENE HERZBRUN GRACE HARTIGAN AND HELENE HERZBRUN — 77 First published in conjunction with the exhibition: Grace Hartigan and Helene Herzbrun: Reframing Abstract Expressionism September 3–October 20, 2019 Due to copyright restrictions, American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center Washington, DC this image has been redacted for

Curated by Norma Broude publication online. Design by Lloyd Greenberg Design, LLC

Perry Collection photography courtesy of Chris Kendall. American University Museum Collection, Private Collection, and Elisabeth French photography courtesy of Greg Staley.

Essay: Grace Hartigan and Helene Herzbrun: Reframing Abstract Expressionism © Norma Broude © Catalogue: The American University Museum ISBN: 978-1-7321553-9-8

Front cover (from top): Grace Hartigan, Beware of the Gifts, 1971. Oil on canvas, framed: 79 3/4 × 103 × 1 1/2 in., image: 79 1/4 × 102 1/2 in. American University Museum, Gift of the American Academy of Arts and Letters (Childe Hassam Fund), 1975.6.1.; Helene Herzbrun, Aeroplat, 1970. Acrylic on canvas, 70 3/4 × 74 1/2 × 1 1/4 in., image: 70 × 73 3/4 in. American University Museum, Gift of Roger S. and Belle O. Kuhn, 1984.5.

Inside front cover: Grace Hartigan, Frank O’Hara, 1926–1966, 1966. Oil on linen, 80 1/8 × 80 in. Courtesy of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Grace Hartigan, 1967.129.

Inside back cover: Helene Herzbrun, Calliope, 1969. Acrylic on canvas, framed: 51 3/4 x 51 3/4 in. Courtesy of Elisabeth French.

Back cover flap (from top): Grace Hartigan in her studio in 1993 with her painting Junk Shop with Egyptian Violet. Photograph by Marty Katz/washingtonphotographer.com; Helene Herzbrun jurying a show, ca. 1980. Unidentified photographer.

Grand Street Brides, p. 11, reproduced with permission from the Grace Hartigan Estate. Digital image © Whitney Museum of American Art / Licensed by Scala / Art Resource, NY.

4400 Massachusetts Ave NW, Washington, DC 20016 “Trust your intuition— that’s all you gain with time.” —HELENE HERZBRUN