As quoted in Contemporary Artists: A-K (2002) by Sara Pendergast and Tom Pendergast, p. 680
Context: I feel that we are living a very fragmented life; the whole world — you too. So I perceive the world in fragments. It is somewhat like being on a very fast train and getting glimpses of things in strange scales as you pass by. A person can be very, very tiny. And a billboard can make a person very large. 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. I have a very pretentious idea that I want to make life, I want to make sense out of it. The fact that I am doomed to failure — that doesn't deter me in the least.
Famous Grace Hartigan Quotes
Statement to World Artists : 1950-1980 as quoted n "Grace Hartigan, 86, Abstract Painter, Dies" in The New York Times (18 November 2008)
Unsourced variant: I have found "my subject", it concerns that which is vital and vulgar in American life and the possibility of its transcendence into the beautiful.
“I didn’t choose painting … It chose me. I didn’t have any talent. I just had genius.”
As quoted in "Grace Hartigan, 86, Abstract Painter, Dies" in The New York Times (18 November 2008) http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/18/arts/design/18hartigan.html?_r=2
“Pop Art is not painting because painting must have content and emotion.”
As quoted in "Grace Hartigan, 86, Abstract Painter, Dies" in The New York Times (18 November 2008)
