Now as before it is the vulgar and the vital and the possibility of its transformation into the beautiful which continues to challenge and fascinate me ... Or perhaps the subject of my art is like the definition of humor — emotional pain remembered in tranquillity.
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Statement to World Artists : 1950-1980 as quoted n "Grace Hartigan, 86, Abstract Painter, Dies" in The New York Times (18 November 2008)
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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.Grace Hartigan
» Grace Hartigan - all quotes »
Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility.
James Thurber
Where is the proof, said I, that daemons may not be subjected to the control of men? This truth may be distorted and debased in the minds of the ignorant. The dogmas of the vulgar, with regard to this subject, are glaringly absurd; but though these may justly be neglected by the wise, we are scarcely justified in totally rejecting the possibility that man may obtain supernatural aid.
Charles Brockden Brown
[On dealing with physical and emotional pain] … a friend taught me before I gave birth…“don't try to take your mind away from the pain. Go right into the centre of the pain”, because when she did that she found the pain dissipated. It's true for me anyway, but it's not always possible, I admit. It has become a valuable exercise to apply to different things in life, of not avoiding or disregarding pain or bad feelings. I just have to remember that nothing in life is ever stagnant and that this grief or ache is going to change because everything in life changes.
Jennifer Beals
While McMurphy laughs. Rocking farther and farther backward against the cabin top, spreading his laugh out across the water — laughing at the girl, at the guys, at George, at me sucking my bleeding thumb, at the captain back at the pier... and the Big Nurse and all of it. Because he knows you have to laugh at the things that hurt you just to keep yourself in balance, just to keep the world from running you plumb crazy. He knows there's a painful side; he knows my thumb smarts and his girlfriend has a bruised breast and the doctor is losing his glasses, but he won't let the pain blot out the humor no more'n he'll let the humor blot out the pain.
Ken Kesey
Wit penetrates; humor envelops. Wit is a function of verbal intelligence; humor is imagination operating on good nature. John Kennedy had wit, and so did Lincoln, who also had abundant humor; Reagan was mostly humor.
Peggy Noonan
Hartigan, Grace
Hartley, L. P.
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