March birthday – Michael Liebhaber

Posted on March 27, 2011October 15, 2011 by — Leave a comment

Grace Hartigan: March-born American artist

March is Women’s History Month in 2011. I am doing a series of brief posts about women artists who were born in March. This is the last in the series. I hope you have enjoyed the posts.

Today’s March-born American artist is Grace Hartigan. Previous artists in this series were Rosa Bonheur, from France, and Americans Diane Arbus, Melissa Miller, and Jennifer Bartlett.

Grace Hartigan was born on March 28th. She is recognized as one of the Abstract Expressionists and an early Pop Artist. Her work sold very well in New York throughout the 1950s. She was the only female artist in the Museum of Modern Art‘s exhibition, The New American Painting, which toured Europe in 1958-1959.

She married for the fourth time in 1960 and moved to Baltimore. She spent over forty years at the Maryland Institute College of Art where she was director of the graduate program at the Hoffberger School of Painting.

Hartigan was distained by the New York art world when she moved to Baltimore and dissed Abstract Expressionism and Pop Art by saying they were not painting because they lacked content and emotion. She also refused to join other feminists against male chauvinism. She is reported to have said: “I find that the subject of discrimination is only ever brought up by inferior talents to excuse their own inadequacy as artists.”.

For more information, see:

Esaak, S. (2011). Artists in 60 Seconds: Grace Hartigan. http://arthistory.about.com/od/nameshh/p/hartigan_grace.htm.

Charles Darwent, C. (Monday, 8 December, 2008). Grace Hartigan: New York School painter who later rejected Abstract Expressionism. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/grace-hartigan-new-york-school-painter-who-later-rejected-abstract-expressionism-1056668.html

Grace Hartigan at U Maryland

Grace Hartigan (American, 1922-2008). New England October, 1957. Oil on canvas. 68 1/4 x 83 in. (173.4 x 210.8 cm). Gift of Seymour H. Knox, Jr., 1958. Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, N.Y.

Posted on March 23, 2011October 15, 2011 by — 3 Comments

American woman, artist, with a March birthday

March is Women’s History Month in 2011. I am doing a series of brief posts about women artists who were born in March. Today’s March-born American artist is Diane Arbus. Previous artists in this series were Rosa Bonheur, from France, and Americans Melissa Miller and Jennifer Bartlett. One more artist remains; an Abstract Expressionist. But weren’t they all men, you say? de Kooning, Kline, Calder, Diebenkorn, etcetera? The mystery deepens.

Diane Arbus was born on March 14. Although she spent a good deal of her early career as a commercial photographer, Diane is most noted for her square-format photographs of “freaks”, as she called some of her subjects. She is reported to have said “I really believe there are things nobody would see if I didn’t photograph them.” She was awarded successive Guggenheim Fellowships, taught photography, and was the first American photographer to have photographs displayed at the Venice Biennale (in 1972).

Two of her photos are below: Child with Toy Hand Grenade in Central Park, New York City, USA (1962) and Identical Twins, Roselle, New Jersey, 1967. Copies of the original prints sold for over $400,000 in 2004-5. The subjects are alive and well. There is a great article about them, other surprisingly well-known subjects, and Diane in a great 2005 Washington Post article by David Segal at:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/11/AR2005051102052.html

Posted on March 18, 2011October 15, 2011 by — Leave a comment

American women artists with March birthdays

March is Women’s History Month in 2011. I am doing a series of brief posts about women artists who were born in March. Today’s artists are Melissa Miller and Jennifer Bartlett.

Melissa W. Miller (born March 3) is Associate Professor of Drawing and Painting at the University of Texas at Austin. Like Rosa Bonheur before her, Melissa Miller paints animals. Despite obvious differences in style, both are successful in spite of going against prevailing norms.

Jennifer Bartlett was born on March 14^th in California. She has exhibited her work around the world and is widely collected privately and by museums throughout the world. Her work ranges from representational to abstract art and is executed in a variety of media, including painting, sculpture, print, and installation.

More info at http://www.artnet.com/artists/jennifer%2Dbartlett/

Bartlett, House # 16, Silkscreen on paper, 14×14 in.

Posted on March 13, 2011October 15, 2011 by — 2 Comments

What everybody ought to know about the creation, sunflowers, and green eggs

What do the creation, sunflowers, and green eggs have in common?

They are all subjects of some well-known March-born artists: Michelangelo (March 6, 1475), Vincent van Gogh (March 30, 1853), and Theodor Geisel (Dr. Seuss, March 2, 1904). I wonder what getting together with these guys for morning coffee would be like?

Many prominent women artists also share March birthdays. Among them is notable French artist Rosa Bonheur. Do you know Rosa? Now she sounds like someone I’d like to have coffee with.

Rosa was born on March 16th, 1822. She is one of the premier animal painters in history and has received many international honors. She’s dead now, but she was tremendously famous, infamous, and artistically successful in her lifetime. On top of all that, she was financially successful, too; no starving, crazed artist here. Her painting, The Horse Fair, became one of the most honored works of the 19th century (Myers, 2008) and one of the Metropolitan Museum’s best known works of art (Rosa Bonheur, 2008). Rosa accomplished all of this at a time when women were not allowed to enroll in academic art study in either public or private institutions.
For more information about Rosa Bonheur, visit these sites:

Rosa Bonheur: The Horse Fair (87.25). (December 2008). In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. Retrieved from http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/87.25
Myers, Nicole. (September 2008). Women Artists in Nineteenth-Century France. In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. Retrieved from http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/19wa/hd_19wa.htm
Esaak, Shelley. (nd). Artists in 60 Seconds: Rosa Bonheur. Retrieved from http://arthistory.about.com/cs/namesbb/p/bonheur.htm

In honor of Women’s History Month 2011, I will feature four American artists with March birthdays. Who are they? Hint: You might be unknowingly famous if you are in one of her photos.