Restless Ambition: Grace Hartigan, Painter by Curtis Cathy

Author:Curtis, Cathy
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780199394500
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2015-01-14T05:00:00+00:00

when she spoke of her Hoffbergers, Grace was uncharacteristically starry-eyed. “I truly love seeing my students grow and get shows and become well-known and make a living as artists, hopefully, and see their work triumph,” she told an interviewer. “I get a lot of joy out of that.” 40 Her students praised her ability to lead them to subjects they felt genuinely passionate about and to help them discover a new freedom in the act of painting. Citing her practice of drawing in her paintings as an alternative to modulating the color—a tactic disparaged by some—she would tell students, “You can do whatever you want, if you can get away with it.” 41

Grace told one student that she needed more “Oh, fuck it!” in her painting. 42 Another student was devastated when Grace told her she knew “absolutely nothing” about color. “I remember going back to my apartment and crying,” she said. “[Grace] wasn’t cruel about it, but it was so upsetting to me. But she was right.” It was also helpful to learn that paintings didn’t need to have a satiric punch line, that they could be “a little less obvious as narrative.” 43 Amazingly, only one of Grace’s students ever dropped out. “And that’s because Grace said, ‘Look you are not a painter. But … you draw incredibly well.’ ” 44 The student apparently found this assessment insulting and left after her first year.

Sometimes, Grace would tell students, “Put the paintbrush down. Draw. Just draw. Your language is in drawing.” Or, “Why don’t you do some three-dimensional things?” 45 At first, according to Leslie King-Hammond 46 —appointed graduate dean in 1976 and ever afterward a close friend of Grace’s—she was so fiercely committed to painting that she couldn’t bring herself to suggest another medium. “But then, as she worked more and more with artists of all kinds and varieties and intents, she began to realize there were more ways to have a voice. … She even evolved to the point where she grew to accept installation [art]. Put her into near cardiac arrest, but against her will, she did grow.” 47 (Though as late as 1998, Grace told an interviewer that she didn’t care much for the way an installation obliges viewers to “walk through a lot of stuff.” Similarly, she claimed to prefer music videos by “Madonna and those people” to “bo-ring” artists’ videos. 48 )

Grace was among the last of her breed. By the 1990s, there were hundreds of master of fine arts programs in the United States, but most were led by career teachers, not by artists with major reputations and long-term, high-level connections in the art world. Working with Grace meant sitting at the feet of an inspiring art legend whose often-recounted struggles in a male-dominated arena had made her a stronger person. The attraction of working with her was such that nearly every student she accepted enrolled at Hoffberger, a greater “yield rate” than any other program at the institute. 49 “Everyone wanted to hear her stories,” Lazarus said.

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