Untitled

Untitled

Grace Hartigan

1961

ink

From the collection of Museum of Modern Art

About this work

This painting looks messy on purpose. You see bold black lines that might be furniture or people, but they’re hard to tell. Bright colors—yellow, purple, red—bleed into each other like wet ink. The edges of the paper are frayed, and the whole thing feels rough, almost like it was made fast. The artist used a printmaking method where ink is pressed onto stone or metal, then transferred to paper. That’s why the colors look slightly smudged and uneven. Check out lithography to see how this technique works.

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