Press Releases
“Grace Hartigan: Works From 1960-65 at the X Contemporary Art Fair, Miami”
by John Seed
Grace Hartigan, whose work played the range between abstraction and representation once told an interviewer: “Now as before it is the vulgar and the vital and the possibility of its transformation into the beautiful which continues to challenge and fascinate me.” Hartigan’s interest in incorporating an eclectic range of images into her paintings–including mannequins, coloring books, images from film, Old Master paintings, and store window displays– vitalized her art but eventually caused the influential critic Clement Greenberg to withdraw his support.
Greenberg, and other influential figures of the time didn’t understand what she was trying to do and the painter Willem de Kooning once reduced her to tears by telling Hartigan that she “completely mis-understood modern art.” The rise of “Pop” art and a move to Baltimore in 1960 removed Hartigan’s once top-flight career from the spotlight, and her reputation has never fully recovered. Even if Hartigan can’t be neatly labeled as an “Abstract Expressionist” her status as a pioneering woman artist at a time when men dominated the field invites study.
Curator Michael Klein, who has been studying and assembling a small exhibition of Hartigan’s works from the early 1960s, thinks a new examination of Hartigan’s achievement is overdue, and he asks a powerful question: just where where does her art, and the art of other pioneering women artists of the 1950s and 60s fit into the “canon” of American painting? 
Every year, South Fork artists garner new and increased attention at the various fairs and events that make up Miami’s Art Basel week. Whether in the grand booths of the Miami Beach Convention Center, in a funky satellite in Wynwood or North Beach, in a family museum in an old warehouse, in a pool cabana, or even in a hotel room, exhibitors from around the corner or around the world bring international exposure to our regional faves and allow us to see how they measure up to the giants of the current and historical marketplace.
NEW YORK, NY (November 25, 2015) As you walk into City Lives, the latest exhibition curated by Michael Klein and hosted by the Shirley Fiterman Arts Center, you are immediately greeted by Priscilla Stadler’s collection of colors title Fragile City. This multicolored arrangement of drapes crowded together like the tall buildings of Manhattan set the stage for the city’s colorful abstract showcased in the creations of 23 unique artists. And just as the name implies, I believe That Stadler is emphasizing the morality of man-made architecture and how nothing really lasts forever, no matter how nice the colors are… 
The third in a series of shows at the Morgan of oil sketches from the Thaw collection, which is jointly shared by the Morgan and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, “Trees” features masterpieces on paper by 18th and 19th century artists from France, Germany and Scandinavia. Highlights include Antoine-Xavier-Gabriel de Gazeau’s exquisite depiction of the remains of a tree in Uprooted Tree, Olevano; Gilles-François-Joseph Closson’s Cluster of Trees, which shows incredibly realistic trees on a hillside with the blank background of the paper exposed; and Johann Georg von Dillis’ oil sketch of a figure dwarfed by nature in Beech Trees in the English Garden, Munich. The Morgan Library & Museum, 225 Madison Avenue, New York, 10:30-5 p.m., free with museum entrance… 
X Contemporary (http://xcontemporary.com/) (227-247 NW 24th St. Miami) is an art fair focused on “cross generational” curated projects. One of these will feature the work of Grace Hartigan, an abstract expressionist artist just starting to get her due. isn’t the only artist being shown.
X-Contemporary, the brainchild of Matthew Eck, is one of the newest art fairs on the Miami art fair circuit. Eck is a co-founder of the well-received but short-lived Select fair, which he organized with Brian Whitely before both went their separate ways.