Artwork Details
- Title
- Pallas Athena – Earth
- Artist
- Date
- 1961
- Location
- Not on view
- Dimensions
- 64 1⁄8 x 52 1⁄8 in. (162.9 x 132.4 cm.)
- Credit Line
- Gift of S.C. Johnson & Son, Inc.
- Mediums
- Mediums Description
- oil on canvas
- Classifications
- Subjects
- Allegory — element — earth
- Mythology — classical — Athena
- Abstract
- Object Number
- 1969.47.17
Artwork Description
Pallas Athena was the Greek goddess of wisdom, strategy, and war. Grace Hartigan has been inspired by fantasy since childhood, when she would dream up stories filled with gypsies, queens, and fairy-tale characters. Here, figural elements emerge from the image, such as the suggestion of a face in the top right, but Hartigan's thick, abstract strokes of paint dominate the canvas. The rich tones of red, brown, and black evoke the earth, spreading across the lower half of the canvas, and the jumbled mass of color at the top may represent the confusion and noise of the realm of the gods. (Barber, "Making Some Marks," quoted in Mattison, Grace Hartigan: A Painter's World, 1990)
Videos
An interview with the artist Grace Hartigan. Grace Hartigan grew up in New Jersey, where she married the boy next door after graduating from high school. They ended up penniless in Los Angeles, however, and Hartigan returned to the East Coast pregnant and alone. In 1948 she was mesmerized and fascinated by a Jackson Pollock exhibition and lived briefly on Long Island with the artist and his wife. She worked odd jobs in New York through the 1950s to pay for paint. In 1959, Hartigan married Dr. Winston Price and moved with him to Baltimore, where she worked in a large studio in Fells Point for decades. (Mattison, Grace Hartigan: A Painters World, 1990)