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Helen Frankenthaler and Grace Hartigan
Grace Hartigan
The Creeks / Grace Hartigan / 1957 © Estate of Grace Hartigan
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Helen Frankenthaler
Untitled (Helen) / Helen Frankenthaler / 1963 © Estate of Helen Frankenthaler
The abstract
expressionists Grace Hartigan and Helen Frankenthaler
worked in a circle dominated by the narrative of male genius. But between them, and a handful of other artist friends including Lee Krasner, they pushed the movement further than ever before, and fought hard for the recognition their work deserved.
Growing up in a cultured middle-class family on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, Frankenthaler had many privileges her fellow female painters did not. She was fascinated with colour from a young age and recalled dribbling nail polish into a sink full of water during her childhood, so that she could watch the colour flow. Her work was notable for developing “colour field painting” characterised by application of a single colour to large fields of the canvas.
Grace Hartigan’s start wasn’t quite so easy. She married aged just 19, and planned to move to Alaska with her husband, to start a simple life as pioneers. It never happened. When her husband was drafted into the army, she moved to New Jersey to study mechanical engineering and work in an
airplane factory and promptly divorced him. Reflecting on her first years of artistry, she later reflected, “I didn’t choose painting. It chose me. I didn’t have any talent. I just had genius.”
In 1945, Grace moved to New
York City. There she met Helen and was blinded by the genius of her social circle, which included Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning and Frank O’Hara. Surrounded by these brilliant men, she decided she would gain more respect under the name “George Hartigan” and did not exhibit as Grace until nine years later.
Both women loved to party. Helen’s first marriage to fellow painter Robert Motherwell earned them the nickname, “the golden couple” and they were known for their lavish entertaining. She loved to dance too. In 1985, she was invited to a White House dinner to honour the Prince and Princess of Wales. She was partnered to dance with a man
who had just finished dancing with Diana. As they twirled, she thought to herself, “I’ve waited a lifetime for a dance like this”. His name didn’t mean anything to her at the time. She later realised it had been John Travolta.
Though they supported each other’s artwork
relentlessly, offering support, critique and an exchange of ideas, their friendship wasn’t without drama. The women had learned to be feisty to survive in their extremely critical, male circle. In 1952, during a period of arguments, Grace wrote in her journal, furious that Helen had gone back on her promise to help her hang her upcoming exhibition. Their different starts in the artworld were also a regular source of friction. While Grace had to balance her art with work and caring for her child, Helen—pretty, slim and clever, with no dependents—was the darling of their circle and had no money worries to distract her from her art. At one party, Grace was angry that nobody had asked her how her painting was going and shouted at Helen that she was nothing but a “fairy princess who hasn’t seen the dragon yet.”
Despite fallings out about art, privilege, men and more, the pair always came back to each other, and their friendship lasted until Grace’s death in 2008.
ABOVE Untitled / Grace Hartigan / 1965 LEFT Covent Garden Study / Helen Frankenthaler / 1984
Above: © ACA Galleries, New York Left: © University of Cambridge
Leonora Carrington
Self-Portrait / Leonora Carrington / 1937 © Creative commons
Remedios Varo
Ascension at Mount Analogue / Remedios Varo / 1960 © Creative commons
Leonora Carrington
and Remedios
Varo had much in common when they first met in Paris during the height of the Surrealist movement. Then in their twenties, they’d both been educated at convent schools, they were both talented and determined artists in a movement dominated by men, and they were both lovers to much older, and much more famous, male artists— Leonora to Max Ernst, and Remedios to her husband, the poet Benjamin Péret.
At the peak of the Second World War, the Mexican President Lazaro Cardenas opened the country’s borders to refugees from Europe. Britishborn Leonora fled to Mexico City following the arrest of Ernst by Nazi forces in France. Spanishborn Remedios fled from Paris having just left prison, where the French government were holding her on account of Péret’s political leanings.
Their friendship deepened considerably in Mexico, and the pair saw each other nearly every day. Leonora later said, “Remedios’s presence in Mexico changed my life.”
Dr Janet Kaplan, who
penned a biography of Remedios Varo in 1988, said that the women spent their time enjoying “Surrealist games, practical jokes, elaborate costume parties and raucous story-telling,” which would go on way into the night.
Leonora and Remedios experimented with Surrealism in all aspects of their lives.
The pair loved to cook “Surrealist meals” together —including an omelette made from human hair —and they made a habit of shopping for herbs from local markets, with which they attempted to make magic potions. One Surrealist recipe jotted down by Remedios aimed to arouse erotic dreams. It called for: “a kilo of horseradish, three white hens, a head of garlic, four kilos of honey, a mirror, two calf livers, a brick, two clothes pins, a corset with stays, two false moustaches and hats, to taste.”
The women studied alchemy, magic, tarot
YOU HAVE A WIG" and astrology together, and conceptualised the rethinking of the domestic space as a backdrop for witchcraft and magical practices. You can see the pair’s fascination with witchcraft and reclaiming the
occult in several of their artistic works, perhaps most notably Leonora’s Three Women Around the Table (1951) and Remedios’ Witch Going to Sabbath (1957).
Leonora and Remedios remained friends for the
rest of their lives, becoming mothers and watching their children grow together— Carrington said that she would work with a baby in one hand and a paintbrush in the other. They lived through a host of European conflicts, many of which are explored through their work.
Together, far from its inner circles in Europe and the US, these women reclaimed the Surrealist movement as something entirely their own, and through the magical realism of their art, somehow transcended their mortal domestic spheres, to connect with the spectres of women long past.
RIGHT: Ascension at Mount Analogue / Remedios Varo / 1960
In The Hearing Trumpet, the pair are in their 90s. Leonora’s alias is bearded, has no teeth and has become a vegetarian. Remedios’s wears a red wig, smokes cigars and sucks on violet lozenges. Reflecting on a friendship that had endured so much, and been cut short so unfairly, Leonora writes, “Here we are at the end of everything. I have a beard, you have a wig!
When Leonora came to write her 1974 novel, The Hearing
Trumpet, she based the two main characters on herself and Remedios. Unlike the real friends, these characters share a friendship that lasts into old age. In reality, Remedios died unexpectedly in 1963.
Self-Portrait (Inn of the Dawn Horse) / Leonora Carrington / 1937-1938
LEFT: Licensed under CC BY 2.0 RIGHT: © Estate of Leonora Carrington
