The Journals of Grace Hartigan, 1951–1955

With an Introduction by Terence Diggory

Paper $29.95    |    978-0-8156-0916-2    |    2009

Grace Hartigan emerged during the 1950s as a leading representative of the "second generation" of the New York School of abstract expressionist painters, a movement that achieved international standing for American art. Published for the first time, Hartigan’s journals offer readers an intimate chronicle of the vibrant artistic and literary milieu of the times.

Description
Grace Hartigan emerged during the 1950s as a leading representative of the "second generation" of the New York School of abstract expressionist painters, a movement that achieved international standing for American art. In 1958, Hartigan was the only woman and one of only two artists under forty chosen by the Museum of Modern Art for a show on that school. Entitled The New American Painting, the show traveled to eight European countries and included such artists as Willem de Kooning, Robert Motherwell, Barnett Newman, Jackson Pollock, and Mark Rothko.

Published for the first time, Hartigan’s journals offer readers an intimate chronicle of the vibrant artistic and literary milieu of the times. Hartigan’s interactions with many of its leading artists, and her close association with such New York School poets as John Ashbery, Kenneth Koch, and Frank O’Hara, make for fascinating reading. The only contemporaneous record of this extraordinary period in art history, this book is a treasure to the art student and literary scholar alike.

Grace Hartigan’s paintings are held in museums throughout the United States, including the Metropolitan Museum and the Whitney Museum of Art. Since 1965 she has worked at the Maryland Institute College of Art, where she is the director of the Hoffberger Graduate School of Painting.

Editors
William T. La Moy serves as curator of Rare Books and Printed Materials for the Special Collections Research Center at Syracuse University Library.

Joseph P. McCaffrey is the Dana Foundation teaching assistant for the Special Collections Research Center at Syracuse University Library.

6 x 9, 232 pages, 8 color and 41 black-and-white illustrations

Copublished with Special Collections Research Center at Syracuse University Library