Ninth Street Women

Starred review from June 18, 2018
Gabriel (Love and Capital) delivers an immersive group biography of Helen Frankenthaler, Grace Hartigan, Elaine de Kooning, Lee Krasner, and Joan Mitchell—eclectic, free-spirited painters who, with their artist husbands and partners, shocked the art world in the 1940s and ’50s with abstract expressionism. The hard-fought ascent of these artists occurred amid years of poverty in spartan New York City apartments (the de Koonings sold their blood to buy kerosene to heat their home). When the market for abstract expressionism boomed in the late 1950s, collectors snapped up blue-chip works by male artists, but women artists, despite their contributions to the movement, were largely written out of the story. Gabriel’s heavy use of firsthand accounts gives the narrative an intimate feel and exposes often painful personal lives, as exemplified by Krasner’s difficult marriage with Jackson Pollock, whose descent into alcoholism and grisly death makes for difficult reading. Through the lens of these women’s lives, Gabriel delivers a sweeping history of abstract expressionism and the postwar New York School, and an affectionate tribute to the underappreciated women of America’s avant-garde. Illus.

Starred review from July 1, 2018

In 1951, the Ninth Street Show exhibited works by abstract expressionist artists in a decrepit downtown New York storefront, bringing extensive attention to the city's expanding avant-garde movement. Many of the trailblazing creators were highly talented women who brought a vital artistic force to the era but were later overlooked. Five of these individuals are brought to life by Pulitzer Prize finalist Gabriel (Love and Capital: Karl and Jenny Mark and the Birth of a Revolution), who shows how each defied social convention and professional boundaries to create new creative forms and attain equality with their male counterparts. Gabriel carefully examines these women's personal and professional lives and unique social, creative, and economic struggles, including a wealth of descriptive anecdotes, historical details, and artistic references. Moreover, the author vividly reflects the multifaceted texture of the period's avant-garde community as well as the impact of a changing societal and cultural framework as it moved from the Depression and World War II into the 1950s. VERDICT A must for modern art historians and enthusiasts. The exceptional research, based on interviews, archival materials, and a variety of background sources, and thoughtfully selected photographs complement the superbly written and absorbing text.--Carol J. Binkowski, Bloomfield, NJ

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from July 1, 2018
From 1929 to 1959, five women were central to a profound artistic revolution.Drawing on memoirs, more than 200 interviews, a huge trove of archival material, and a wide range of books and articles, Gabriel (Love and Capital: Karl and Jenny Marx and the Birth of a Revolution, 2011, etc.) has created an ambitious, comprehensive, and impressively detailed history of abstract expressionism focused on the lives and works of Elaine de Kooning, Lee Krasner, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, and Helen Frankenthaler. The author effectively sets her subjects in historical and cultural context, including "the ever-changing role of women in U.S. society, and the often overlooked spiritual importance of art to humankind." The last goal is realized best through the testimonies of the women themselves about the significance of art to their spiritual well-being. Of different generations and often rivals, they did not cohere into a group, but they shared "courage, a spirit of rebellion, and a commitment to create." They noisily railed against being ignored by the art establishment, angry that their husbands or lovers (Elaine's Willem de Kooning and Krasner's Jackson Pollock, for example) won attention and accolades while they were assumed "to accept the part of a grateful appendage" or, at best, a muse. Pollock, touted in a Life magazine profile as possibly "the greatest living painter in the United States," emerged as the first artist celebrity. Gabriel takes her title from a groundbreaking exhibition organized, mounted, and publicized by artists in May 1951 that made the New York School of painters--the term was coined by Robert Motherwell--instantly visible. Although gaining critical attention, the first generation of New School artists struggled financially, working and living in unheated studios, subsisting on meager meals, trading art for food, and fueling themselves with copious amounts of alcohol. Their "community of goodwill and creativity" was undermined by betrayal, infidelity, and drunkenness. The author traces the changing art world with the influx of new galleries and "a tidal wave of money" as art caught on as an investment.A sympathetic, authoritative collective biography.

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Narrator Lisa Stathoplos maintains a steady pace throughout this lengthy and interesting story of five female abstract expressionist painters who were often overshadowed by their more famous husbands and fellow artists. Stathoplos's thoughtfully placed emphasis on the many quotes taken from interviews, journals, and critical writings keeps the narrative exciting. Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, and Helen Frankenthaler lived and painted their own way, never behaving as women of their time were expected to. Intimate and juicy details abound of their alcohol- and jazz-fueled interactions with the avant-garde painters and poets, writers and thinkers of their day. The audiobook, enlivened by this superb reading, educates and entertains on several levels--New York's post-WWII art scene, history as seen through the eyes of artists, and women's studies. J.E.S. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award � AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine

Starred review from September 1, 2018
Biographer Gabriel corrects long-standing misperceptions about New York's abstract-expressionism movement by telling the dramatic, often traumatic stories of the five gifted and courageous women painters at the center of that radical flowering. The foundation for this avidly researched, deeply analyzed, gorgeously written, and endlessly involving five-track mix of biography and history is the daring experiences and essential accomplishments of Lee Krasner (pragmatic, strong and serious ) and Elaine de Kooning ( siren, saint, creative tempest, a key critic as well as a painter). Both rejected gender restrictions, served as leaders in the community of cutting-edge artists, endured poverty, and supported, often with anguish, their driven husbands, Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning. Grace Hartigan followed a more convoluted course to success, only to be quickly forgotten. Ferocious and fragile Joan Mitchell and audacious prodigy Helen Frankenthaler led the movement's second generation, facing new battles as big money entered the art scene, and women lost what little ground they gained. Gabriel not only provides vibrantly detailed accounts of these five exceptional avant-garde artists' friendships and rivalries, affairs and marriages, doubt and despair, conviction and resilience; she also establishes a richly dimensional context for their struggles and innovations, delving into the impact on the arts and on women's lives of the Great Depression, WWII, the atomic bomb, and the Cold War. Gabriel has created an incandescent, engrossing, and paradigm-altering art epic.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)