Women Of Abstract Expressionism

This publication contains a survey of female abstract expressionist artists, revealing the richness and lasting influence of their work and the movement as a whole as well as highlighting the lack of critical attention they have received to date.

Five women revolutionize the modern art world in postwar America in this "gratifying, generous, and lush" true story from a National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize finalist (Jennifer Szalai, New York Times). Set amid the most turbulent social and political period of modern times, Ninth Street Women is the impassioned, wild, sometimes tragic, always exhilarating chronicle of five women who dared to enter the male-dominated world of twentieth-century abstract painting -- not as muses but as artists. From their cold-water lofts, where they worked, drank, fought, and loved, these pioneers burst open the door to the art world for themselves and countless others to come. Gutsy and indomitable, Lee Krasner was a hell-raising leader among artists long before she became part of the modern art world's first celebrity couple by marrying Jackson Pollock. Elaine de Kooning, whose brilliant mind and peerless charm made her the emotional center of the New York School, used her work and words to build a bridge between the avant-garde and a public that scorned abstract art as a hoax. Grace Hartigan fearlessly abandoned life as a New Jersey housewife and mother to achieve stardom as one of the boldest painters of her generation. Joan Mitchell, whose notoriously tough exterior shielded a vulnerable artist within, escaped a privileged but emotionally damaging Chicago childhood to translate her fierce vision into magnificent canvases. And Helen Frankenthaler, the beautiful daughter of a prominent New York family, chose the difficult path of the creative life. Her gamble paid off: At twenty-three she created a work so original it launched a new school of painting. These women changed American art and society, tearing up the prevailing social code and replacing it with a doctrine of liberation. In Ninth Street Women, acclaimed author Mary Gabriel tells a remarkable and inspiring story of the power of art and artists in shaping not just postwar America but the future.

Offering a fresh perspective on the influence of the American southwest--and particularly West Texas--on the New York art world of the 1950s, Three Women Artists: Expanding Abstract Expressionism in the American West aims to establish the significance of itinerant teaching and western travel as a strategic choice for women artists associated with traditional centers of artistic authority and population in the eastern United States. The book is focused on three artists: Elaine de Kooning, Jeanne Reynal, and Louise Nevelson. In their travels to and work in the High Plains, they were inspired to innovate their abstract styles and introduce new critical dialogues through their work. These women traveled west for the same reason artists often travel to new places: they found paid work, markets, patrons, and friends. This Middle American context offers us a "decentered" modernism--demanding that we look beyond our received truths about Abstract Expressionism. Authors Amy Von Lintel and Bonnie Roos demonstrate that these women's New York avant-garde, abstract styles were attractive to Panhandle-area ranchers, bankers, and aspiring art students. Perhaps as importantly, they show that these artists' aesthetics evolved in light of their regional experiences. Offering their work as a supplement and corrective to the frameworks of patriarchal, East Coast ethnocentrism, Von Lintel and Roos make the case for Texas as influential in the national art scene of the latter half of the twentieth century.

This magnificent publication presents surveys the vital role of women in the development of Abstract Expressionism by looking at more than 50 paintings, collages, and sculptures all accompanied by carefully selected quotes from the artists themselves. The dominant movement of the New York and San Francisco art scenes of the mid-20th century, Abstract Expressionism is celebrated as the first development in American art to gain international status. The movement is synonymous with the work of Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, and Willem de Kooning, but also belonging to this generation who changed the course of modern art were numerous female artists; only in recent years have their contributions received the recognition they deserve. The remarkable women in this exciting new book - among them Perle Fine, Helen Frankenthaler, Sonia Gechtoff, Lee Krasner, and Joan Mitchell - studied at the same art schools as the men, exhibited at the same galleries, and were part of the same social scene. But their work was not shown and reviewed as widely or considered as valuable as that of the men. This beautiful book presents the works of the Levett Collection, an unparalleled private collection of paintings, drawings, and sculpture by women Abstract Expressionists. Richly illustrated essays by the scholars Ellen G. Landau and Joan M. Marter, leading authorities on the subject, consider, respectively, the vital role of women in the development of Abstract Expressionism and the work of women sculptors of the movement. Full of exuberant, explosive color and densely layered expression, the main part of the book is devoted to more than 50 paintings, collages, and sculptures, all accompanied by pertinent quotes from the women about their artistic practice and concerns. An illustrated timeline and 35 artist biographies provide further insight, making this volume an essential addition to the study of Abstract Expressionist women, innovators in their own right, whose time in the art-historical spotlight has finally come.

In 1946 the art critic Robert Coates, writing in the New Yorker, first used the term 'Abstract Expressionism'. The two words combine the emotional intensity of the German Expressionists with the anti-figurative aesthetic of the European Abstract schools. Although they were being painted by then little-known artists working in low-rent studio space, works of Abstract Expressionist art now dominate the walls of major museums. The last major collective Abstract Expressionism exhibition to have taken place in the UK occurred in 1959. This important publication, and the exhibition it accompanies, seek to redress the balance and re-evaluate the movement, recognising its complex and fluid reality, and branching further into multimedia. As such, this book encompasses sculptors such as David Smith and photographers such as Aaron Siskind as well as some of the most famous painters of the twentieth century, including Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman, Franz Kline, Arshile Gorky and Clyfford Still. AUTHOR: David Anfam is the author of the now-standard textbook Abstract Expressionism (1990). Susan Davidson is Senior Curator, Collections and Exhibitions, at the Soloman R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. Edith Devaney is Curator of Contemporary Projects at the Royal Academy of Arts. Jeremy Lewison is former Director of Collections at Tate. Carter Ratcliff wrote Fate of a Gesture: Jackson Pollock and Postwar American Art (1996). Christian Wurst was researcher on The Catalogue Raisonné of the Drawings of Jasper Johns (forthcoming). SELLING POINTS: * Accompanies the first major exhibition of Abstract Expressionism in the UK since 1959 * Works of Abstract Expressionist art dominate the walls of major museums around the world * Features an impressive range of experts who discuss some of the signature paintings of the movement 300 colour

The Abstract Expressionist movement has long been bound up in the careers and lifestyles of about twelve white male artists who exhibited in New York in the 1940s. In this book Ann Eden Gibson reconsiders the history of the movement by investigating other artists -- people of color, women, and gays and lesbians -- whose versions of abstraction have been largely ignored until now.

The first in-depth resource on the American artists Elaine de Kooning, Helen Frankenthaler, Grace Hartigan, Lee Krasner, Joan Mitchell, and Ethel Schwabacher.

This book explores the portraiture of Elaine de Kooning, an enormously talented artist whose widely admired body of work—both abstract and figurative—is overdue for a contemporary reassessment. John F. Kennedy, Frank O’Hara, Allen Ginsberg, Merce Cunningham, and Fairfield Porter were just some of the figures who sat for portraits by Elaine de Kooning. Famous for her marriage to the Abstract Expressionist Willem de Kooning, Elaine was herself a groundbreaking artist and writer who challenged many conventions during her career. Although she portrayed women, she was most engaged with portraits of men, sometimes painting multiple portraits of her subjects in order to explore and capture their most compelling likeness. She focused intently on her subjects—as she wrote in 1965, "Like falling in love painting a portrait is a concentration on one particular person and no one else will do." This insightful book explores de Kooning’s portraits as well as her artistic process and her position in the rise of Postmodernism. Illustrated throughout with full-color reproductions of paintings, drawings, and archival photos, this book is an important contribution to the literature on Abstract Expressionism, women artists, and feminism during a transformative period, and will also appeal to lovers of painting of all kinds.