Art through Chaos

Inclement Weather reflects Grace Hartigan's view that "we are living a very fragmented life . . . like being on a very fast train and getting glimpses of things in strange scales as you pass by. . . . You see the corner of a house or you see a bird fly by, and it's all fragmented. Somehow, in painting I try to make some logic out of the world that has been given to me in chaos."

Source: Modernism & Abstraction: Treasures from the Smithsonian American Art Museum (exhibition text, Smithsonian American Art Museum, 1999).

Pictured: Grace Hartigan (born 1922), Inclement Weather,1970, acrylic, 78 1/4 x 88 1/4 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Mr. and Mrs. David K. Anderson, Martha Jackson Memorial Collection.