His Gallery of Modern Art in New York City, featuring an Edward Durell Stone design, opened at 2 Columbus Circle in 1964 to risible reviews, both for its structure and offerings. He had promoted the museum as a bulwark against modernism in art, whether the paintings of Pablo Picasso and Willem de Kooning or the literature of William Faulkner and Tennessee Williams.He condemned the "vulgar" and "meaningless" extremes of modern abstract art, preferring what he called "realistic art" of an earlier period. His vocal antipathy to artists he disliked led to the resignation of all advisors to his self-titled foundation meant to aid composers, writers and fine artists. He appointed new advisors and bought large advertisements condemning "obscurity, confusion, immorality, violence" in contemporary painting.
Meanwhile, with money never an object, he remained devoted to extracurricular pleasures, including the study of handwriting, petroleum extraction and the personal lives of showgirls. He once dated Marilyn Monroe and described her as "too pushy, like a high-class hooker."
His excesses cost him financially and personally. He had unexpectedly ascetic habits in some areas of his life, such as a disinclination to drink alcohol. But his fourth marriage, in the 1970s, marked a turning point. According to a 2004 issue of Vanity Fair magazine, his last wife, a Fort Lauderdale, Fla., hairdresser a decade his junior, introduced Hartford to cocaine, amphetamines and Quaaludes. At least once he was hospitalized for an overdose.
After his fourth marriage ended, Hartford spent his final years living quietly in the Bahamas, a much-reduced figure than how he presented himself in his prime.
In his 1964 book "Art or Anarchy?," a polemic against modernism, he described championing traditional art against the prevailing trends. "I have always hated the goose step," he wrote.
― Ned Raggett, Tuesday, 20 May 2008 17:30 (seventeen years ago)