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Spring 2000
Grace Hartigan: Painting from Popular Culture and Post Pop
The
main galleries on the first and second floor of the museum will feature
a retrospective of paintings by internationally-acclaimed artist Grace
Hartigan. Entitled Grace Hartigan: Painting From Popular Culture,
Three Decades, the exhibition examines Ms. Hartigan's appropriation
of pop culture themes in her paintings from the 70's, 80’s and 90's. This
exhibition is the first devoted exclusively to examining Ms. Hartigan's
use of pop culture images and icons. The paintings, all of which are large,
some as big as 7 feet by 8 feet, utilize images such as dolls, movie stars,
and toys.
Ms. Hartigan has held a long-time fascination with interpreting popular culture since she rose as an international art star in the 1950's. Ms. Hartigan's use of pop culture imagery in many ways predated and influenced the "Pop artists" of the 1960's, who are known for exploring pop culture and the media.
Among the paintings in the exhibitions are a large painting revealing a tableau of Halloween masks, a painting based on a Chinese calendar and a painting of a groom's tuxedo as seen through the window of a bridal shop. Two paintings from the 1990's, one of Rudolph Valentino, and one of Marilyn Monroe, explore our cultural fascination with movie stars. The painting of Monroe reveals a distinctly "unglamorous" side of the popular icon.
Ms. Hartigan is identified with the abstract expressionist painters of the 1950's, whose brilliant abstract paintings transformed the art world internationally. Ms. Hartigan was among the youngest of these painters, a group which included Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning. Ms. Hartigan is also known for her close relationship to many influential writers, including New York poet Frank O'Hara, who dedicated several poems to her.
The
exhibition Post Pop will open in the museum's second
floor Project Room. Curated by museum Executive Director Jonathan VanDyke,
the exhibition examines how contemporary artists have built upon the themes
developed by the Pop artists, such as Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein,
in the 1960's and 70's. The works in Post Pop, including paintings and
sculpture, utilize cartoon-like imagery as well as images pulled directly
from printed media. The exhibition includes work by Sean Mellyn, Frank
Moore, Karin Davie, Jonathan Lasker, Jeff Koons, Amy Sillman, and Thomas
Trosch.