'“I want a surface that resists, like a wall, not opens, like a gate,” wrote the painter Grace Hartigan in 1956. Associated for a time with the abstract expressionist movement, she depicted the bridal shop windows of Manhattan with roughened gestures and vivid hues. In Anna Kate Blair’s debut novel, The Modern, Hartigan is something of a muse for the narrator, Sophia, who is completing her dissertation on the artist while she works at MoMA.' (Publication summary)
