Pat Hearn Explained

Pat Hearn (1955 – 2000) was an American art dealer, who ran Pat Hearn Gallery in New York City from 1983 until 2000. Hearn founded the Armory Show with American art dealer Colin De Land, Matthew Marks, and Paul Morris in 1994.[1]

Art gallery

Hearn championed the work of artists like Philip Taaffe, Milan Kunc, Peter Schuyff, Jutta Koether, Monique Prieto, Gretchen Faust Jeff Elrod, Susan Hiller, Renee Green, Lincoln Tobier, Pat de Groot,[2] Simon Leung, George Condo, Jack Pierson, Mark Morrisroe, Jimmy De Sana, Mary Heilmann, Joan Jonas, Lutz Bacher, Eva Hesse, and Ana Mendieta.[3]

In 1985, Andy Warhol cast Hearn as a naked muse, plastering her in white body paint and high-contrast lipstick for a Polaroid shoot in preparation for an iconic silkscreen portrait.[4] [5] In 1987, Hearn posed for Timothy Greenfield-Sanders as part of is series called Art World.[6]

Armory Show

In 1994, the Gramercy International Art Fair, now called the Armory Show, made its debut in the rooms and hallways of New York's Gramercy Park Hotel.[7] At the time, the Fair was an alternative to the more polished and established fairs like Art Basel and Art Chicago (now Expo Chicago). Four dealers and gallerists, Pat Hearn, Colin de Land, Matthew Marks and Paul Morris, worked together to bring in a younger generation of downtown artists who were working through the recession that plagued the 1980s.[8] A number of seminal contemporary artworks and performances debuted at the fair including Mark Dion's Lemonade Stand (1996), Andrea Fraser’s Museum Highlights: A Gallery Talk (1989), May I Help You (1991), and Renée Green’s The Pigskin Library (1990).[9]

Collection

Hearn died in August 2000, aged 45, of liver cancer while on vacation in Provincetown, Massachusetts.

The American Fine Arts Co. and Pat Hearn Gallery collections were acquired by The Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College (Bard CCS), in Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y.[10] In 2018 Bard CCS organized the show "The Conditions of Being Art: Pat Hearn Gallery and American Fine Arts, Co. (1983–2004)" at Hessel Museum of Art on "the shared histories, art, and programming activities of Pat Hearn Gallery and American Fine Arts, Co., Colin de Land Fine Art" and published a book of the same title (Dancing Foxes Press, 2018).

Notes and References

  1. Web site: Reviewing Pat Hearn Gallery. Art in. America. June 25, 2018.
  2. News: Johnson . Ken . 2000-04-21 . Art In Review; Pat de Groot . 2024-06-21 . . en-US . 0362-4331.
  3. News: Pat Hearn, Art Dealer In New York, Dies at 45. Roberta. Smith. The New York Times. August 20, 2000.
  4. Web site: says. Alyson Schultz. 2018-09-12. Views from the Gallery: Pat Hearn, From Newport to New York. 2022-02-19. Leaver-Yap. en.
  5. Web site: Pat Hearn by Andy Warhol (1985). www.artnet.com.
  6. Web site: Pat Hearn by Timothy Greenfield-Sanders (1987). www.artnet.com.
  7. Web site: 2019-03-06 . From grit to glitter: a look back at 25 years of The Armory Show . 2022-05-10 . The Art Newspaper - International art news and events.
  8. Web site: Morris . Paul . 2016-03-02 . Armory Show Cofounder Paul Morris Takes a Trip Down Memory Lane . 2022-05-10 . ARTnews.com . en-US.
  9. Web site: The Armory Show . https://web.archive.org/web/20181223205831/https://www.thearmoryshow.com/armory-25/the-gramercy-years . 23 Dec 2018 . 2022-05-10 . www.thearmoryshow.com.
  10. Web site: CCS Bard Acquires Archives of Colin de Land's American Fine Arts and the Pat Hearn Gallery. . November 7, 2012.