The Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art at Utah State University is presenting two exhibitions featuring work by June Harwood (1933-2015) and some of her contemporaries.
June Harwood Paintings is a retrospective of the work of the California-based artist and Los Angeles Hard Edge from the Collection is a presentation of 11 works from NEHMA’s collection by artists who were her contemporaries.
Both exhibitions are on view through Dec. 14.
The term “Hard-Edge” was first coined by Jules Langsner, a prominent art critic and Harwood’s husband. He brought together the work of painters Karl Benjamin, Lorser Feitelson, Frederick Hammersley, and John McLaughlin for the first exhibition of Hard-Edge painting, Four Abstract Classicists, organized by Los Angeles County Museum of Art and first shown at the San Francisco Museum of Artin 1959.
The style is characterized by abstract, flat shapes that abut and interlock with one another, precisely painted crisp lines, and smooth planes of color.
In 1964, Langsner curated a second exhibition, California Hard-Edge Painting at the Pavilion Gallery in Balboa, California, which included Harwood’s work along with that of several other artists.
Many critics and scholars have juxtaposed Hard-Edge with the Abstract Expressionist movement in New York and posited it as a precursor to the Light and Space movement in southern California. Most of the original Hard-Edge artists have received retrospectives, but this exhibition is the first to acknowledge Harwood’s legacy.
June Harwood Paintings
A key but underrecognized figure in the Los Angeles Hard-Edge movement, Harwood developed and refined her signature style of vivid colors and dynamic compositions in the 1960s. June Harwood Paintings features 34 paintings from throughout her career and includes Harwood’s better-known Hard-Edge work from the1960s and 1970s, including her Sliver, Colorform, Loop, Jigsaw, and Rock series.
Katie Lee-Koven, the executive director and chief curator of NEHMA, said: “We are honored to host the long-awaited retrospective for June Harwood, an important mid-century modern artist from the West who helped lead the way towards the development of Los Angeles’ Finish Fetish and Light and Space movements. The exhibition not only celebrates Harwood’s work but also marks the generous gift of four of her paintings to the Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art by the June Harwood Charitable Trust. These acquisitions deepen our holdings of Hard-Edge paintings from the broader Western region and align with our commitment to supporting and celebrating artists whose work deserves more attention.”
Exhibition Highlights
June Harwood Paintings offers an opportunity to explore the evolution of Harwood’s work from experimenting with collage, as seen in her Slivers series (1960 – 64) to transforming that medium’s rigidity and sharp lines into painted shapes on canvas, arriving at her version of Hard-Edge painting by the early 1960s. Harwood increasingly incorporated curvilinear as well as rectangular forms into her work. In the course of her Colorform series (1964 – 66), she shifted from angular fields of color to more organic shapes.
In her Jigsaw seriesfrom the1970s, Harwood explored a theme that is present throughout her oeuvre: the idea of the painted pattern on the canvas as only one visible section of a more expansive, interconnected whole.From the late 1970s through the 1990s, Harwood’s working methods shifted. For the Rock series (1977-82), with paintings named after famous rock-and-roll bands, Harwood splattered paint on pieces of paper in the manner of the Abstract Expressionists of the 1940s and 50s.
She then cut up and combined these paper fragments to make mock-ups for her paintings. With her characteristic meticulousness, she recreated on canvas the papers’ gestural brushstrokes and drips of paint, using masking tape to demarcate the sharp lines and loose strokes.
From 1990 to 2000, Harwood abandoned her careful geometric compositions and bold palette to experiment with new approaches. The paintings from the Migration series merge dark and muted tones with textural impasto inspired by natural landscapes. Her signature elements — interlocking color forms, geometric shapes, and clean, curving lines — reemerged in her later years.
Theexhibition, modified for NEHMA, originated at the Benton Museum of Art at Pomona College, Claremont, California (Aug. 23, 2023 to Jan. 7, 2024) and was organized in partnership with the June Harwood Charitable Trust.
Publication
The publication June Harwood Paintings is a 336-page casebound book consisting of 102 plates and six essays by Christopher Knight, Art Critic at TheLos Angeles Times; Daniell Cornell, former director, Palm Springs Art Museum; Rebecca McGrew, former senior curator, Benton Museum of Art at Pomona College; and Dennis Reed, June Harwood Charitable Trust. The book contains a chronology and illustrated index of Harwood’s artworks, including paintings, sculpture and prints.
Los Angeles Hard-Edge
Los Angeles Hard Edge from the Collection features 11 works by eight artists from NEHMA’s permanent collection and runs concurrently with the exhibition, June Harwood Paintings, placing her work in a broader context. Artists include Florence Arnold, John Barbour, Karl Benjamin, Lorser Feitelson, Frederick Hammersley, Mabel Hutchinson, Helen Lundeberg, and John McLaughlin. Harwood and these artists participated in the 1964 exhibition California Hard-Edge Painting at the Pavilion Gallery in Balboa, California. Their paintings emphasized flat shapes, colors, and forms differentiated from each other by well-defined (“hard”) edges.
Highlights include Feitelson’s, Dichotomic Organization (1959), which was included in Four Abstract Classicists. The title of the painting was Feitelson’s way of indicating that the painting is divided in two. Karl Benjamin’s Interlocking Forms (Yellow, Orange, Black) (1959)is characteristic of the artist’s tightly balanced, colorful compositions which seem to vibrate in space.
Hammersley’s Up in #2 (1961) creates tension where the black and gold squares meet. Hammersley had a similar work in the Four Abstract Classicists exhibition titled Unlike (1959). In the 1950s, Lundeberg began to explore geometric abstraction that has been described as both formal and lyrical. Untitled (1970) is an example of her paintings from this period and is strikingly similar to Harwood’s paintings from her Sliver series.
Hutchinson’s Untitled (Totem) (c. 1965) of stained pine and walnut, shares an emphasis on simple geometric shapes reflected in the work of Los Angeles Hard-Edge painters.
“This is the first time that NEHMA has been able to celebrate this material from the collection in such a focused way, and examine its important contribution to western art history,” said exhibition curator Bolton Colburn.
Partial funding for the education components of this exhibition has come from The Feitelson/Lundeberg Art Foundation.
About June Harwood
Born in Middleton, New York, in 1933, Harwood obtained a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Syracuse University in 1953 and a Master of Arts degree from California State University, Los Angeles, in 1957. She was a teacher at Hollywood High School in Los Angeles (1958 to 1970), and at Los Angeles Valley College (1975 to 1993), where she became a professor and, for a period, chairperson of the Art Department. She was a member of the Los Angeles Art Association. In 1965, Harwood was married to art critic and curator Jules Langsner until his sudden death two years later in 1967.
Harwood’s work was included in several exhibitions in the Art Gallery at Los Angeles Valley College, including a one-person show in 1991. Broader interest in her work was revived by the 2003 exhibition, Hard-Edge Painting Revised:1959-1969, at NOHO Modern Gallery in North Hollywood, California and The Los Angeles School exhibition, at Otis College of Art and Design in 2006. Harwood’s work can be found in numerous private, corporate, and public collections, including California State University, Los Angeles; Long Beach Museum of Art; Los Angeles Valley College; Newport Art Museum; San José Museum of Art; University of Southern California; and University of California, Santa Barbara. Harwood died in 2015.
The Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art
The Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art is dedicated to collecting and exhibiting modern and contemporary visual art to promote dialogue about ideas fundamental to contemporary society. NEHMA provides meaningful engagement with art from the 20th and 21st centuries to support the educational mission of Utah State University, in Logan, Utah. NEHMA offers complementary public programs such as lectures, panels, tours, concerts, and symposia to serve the University and regional community. Admission is free and open to the public. Hours are Tuesday – Friday 9:00 am – 4:00 pm; Saturday 10:00 am – 6:00 pm; and by appointment.http://artmuseum.usu.edu/
