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Fierce Poise: Helen Frankenthaler and 1950s New York
by
66/99
Critics
19/99
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Scholars
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Rating
89/99
Volume
7/99
Rating
31/99
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About This Book
A dazzling biography of one of the twentieth-century's most respected painters, Helen Frankenthaler, as she came of age as both an artist and a woman in the vibrant art world of 1950s New York At the dawn of the 1950s, a promising young painter named Helen Frankenthaler, fresh out of college, moved to New York City. By the decade's end, she had succeeded in establishing herself as an important American artist of the postwar period. In the years in between, she made some of the most daring, head-turning paintings of her day and also came into her own as a woman: traveling the world, falling in and out of love, and engaging in an ongoing artistic education. She also experienced anew--and made her mark on--the city in which she had been raised in privilege as the daughter of a judge, even as she left the security of that world to pursue her artistic ambitions. Brought to vivid life by acclaimed art historian Alexander Nemerov, these defining moments--from her first awed encounter with Jackson Pollock's drip paintings to her first solo gallery show to her tumultuous breakup with eminent art critic Clement Greenberg--comprise a portrait as bold and distinctive as the painter herself. Inspired by Pollock and the other male titans of Abstract Expressionism but set on charting her own course, Frankenthaler was an artist whose talent was matched only by her unapologetic determination to distinguish herself in a man's world. Fierce Poise is an exhilarating ride through New York's 1950s art scene and a brilliant portrait of a young artist through the moments that shaped her.
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Reviews
"It's part of an insistence by many of today's art historians that attention must be paid to female artists and artists of color who have been denied respect and recognition for their achievements."
"Based on a thumbnail biographical sketch, Frankenthaler possesses the potential of an Edith Wharton heroine."
"Nemerov is a thoughtful and judicious writer."
"Art historian Nemerov chose not to write a full biography of abstract expressionist painter Helen Frankenthaler, a student of his father's at Bennington College, but rather to follow her footsteps as she created her uniquely fluid, liberated, personal, and animated visual language and techniques and attained prominence in her twenties ..."
"While some may disagree with the author's assumption about audience appreciation of Frankenthaler's oeuvre, this book will appeal to those interested in the developmental years of a 1950s artist, and her creative process."
"In the end, Fierce Poise is less a biography than a work of ekphrasis that relies on an idealized vessel."
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