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Fierce Poise: Helen Frankenthaler and 1950s New York
A National Book Critics Circle finalist • O ne of Vogue 's Best Books of the Year
A dazzling biography of one of the twentieth century's most respected painters, Helen Frankenthaler, as she came of age as an artist in postwar New York
“The magic of Alexander Nemerov's portrait of Helen Frankenthaler in Fierce Poise is that it reads like one of Helen's paintings. His poetic descriptions of her work and his rich insights into the years when Helen made her first artistic breakthroughs are both light and lush, seemingly easy and yet profound. His book is an ode to a truly great artist who, some seventy years after this story begins, we are only now beginning to understand.” ― Mary Gabriel, author of Ninth Street Women
At the dawn of the 1950s, a promising and dedicated young painter named Helen Frankenthaler, fresh out of college, moved back home to New York City to make her name. 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 traveling the world, falling in and out of love, and engaging in an ongoing artistic education. She also experienced anew―and left 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 committed to 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.
A dazzling biography of one of the twentieth century's most respected painters, Helen Frankenthaler, as she came of age as an artist in postwar New York
“The magic of Alexander Nemerov's portrait of Helen Frankenthaler in Fierce Poise is that it reads like one of Helen's paintings. His poetic descriptions of her work and his rich insights into the years when Helen made her first artistic breakthroughs are both light and lush, seemingly easy and yet profound. His book is an ode to a truly great artist who, some seventy years after this story begins, we are only now beginning to understand.” ― Mary Gabriel, author of Ninth Street Women
At the dawn of the 1950s, a promising and dedicated young painter named Helen Frankenthaler, fresh out of college, moved back home to New York City to make her name. 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 traveling the world, falling in and out of love, and engaging in an ongoing artistic education. She also experienced anew―and left 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 committed to 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.
304 pages, Paperback
First published March 23, 2021
140 people are currently reading
1709 people want to read
About the author
Alexander Nemerov
51 books26 followersA scholar of American art, Nemerov writes about the presence of art, the recollection of the past, and the importance of the humanities in our lives today. Committed to teaching the history of art more broadly as well as topics in American visual culture — the history of American photography, for example — he is a noted writer and speaker on the arts. His most recent books are Wartime Kiss: Visions of the Moment in the 1940s (2013) and Acting in the Night: Macbeth and the Places of the Civil War (2010). In 2011 he published To Make a World: George Ault and 1940s America (2011), the catalogue to the exhibition of the same title he curated at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Among his recent essays are pieces on Peter Paul Rubens, on Henry James, on Thomas Eakins and JFK; and on Rothko and Rembrandt.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 89 reviews
April 23, 2021
Deeply disappointing. It’s about time we are given a Frankenthaler biography. But this was such a let down, not only to those of us who love her work, but also, I can only imagine, to Frankenthaler if she were alive (I think she would hate it).
This is a case of someone loving something too much that they cannot see it at all. It’s like standing with your nose pressed against your favorite work of art. How can you possibly see it? Nemerov does nothing but put Frankenthaler up on a pedestal, even embarrassingly insisting on referring to her as “Helen” throughout the book. (Eye roll)
Nemerov mixes biography with criticality and I’m not sure it works. His descriptions of her work are so vague in the attempts of being poetic that you can’t get a sense of what the work looks like. And in doing so he only feeds the issue her work has been accused of - and which he himself is trying to defend: light, feminine, non-serious, decorative. His writing is wet and does no one any favors. I found myself nauseously skipping over passages of description as if I was closing my eyes during a gruesome scene in a movie - if I don’t see it, it didn’t happen. He falls so short in leading us to understand Frankenthaler and what made her work so revolutionary and important. Instead she comes across as petty, short tempered and… lucky.
I heard a talk in which he awkwardly claimed that his take on her was one with a feminist stance. With this in mind I cringed while reading his description of her personality and her personal life.
It also only covers a decade of her life - UGH, really?! We are starving for Frankenthaler. Please! Making the decision to only cover the 1950’s, when she was young, emerging, and having fun love affairs. There is something about this choice that I find so sexist and tired. We never see her as a whole woman.
While there are a few enjoyable pieces of information in the book - stories of her drawing chalk lines from her childhood home to the playground behind the Met, dripping her mothers red lacquer nail polish into the bathroom sink full of water while watching it bloom and bleed as the sink drained, and reading about her oh so romantic relationship with Robert Motherwell - those rare gems made it worth the read. Also, being a fan of Frank O’Hara’s poetry I also loved hearing more about their friendship and Nemerov made some nice comparisons between his poetry and her painting.
Coming off the heals of reading Gail Levin’s biography of Lee Krasner, this book didn’t stand a chance. That book is so well done, if you like Kranser I recommend. If you want to read about Frankenthaler, “9th Street Women: Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell and Helen Frankenthaler: Five Painters and the Movement That Changed Modern Art” by Mary Gabriel is a truly epic documentation of New York in the 40’s and 50’s and the women painting during that time. I would also HIGHLY recommend Barbra Rose’s essay in the Helen Frankenthaler monograph (which is so beautiful). I haven’t read anything else that compares to Rose’s acute understanding and breadth of wisdom when it comes to Frankenthaler and her work. Mind-blowing. Also be sure to listen to the Getty’s “Recording Artists: Helen Frankenthaler, Let’er Rip” podcast with Barbara Rose and Cindy Nemser. Again, Rose and Nemser are so smart, and in it you hear some rare recordings of Frankenthaler speaking about her work.
3 stars - I wanted to love this book, and really didn’t. But stars for the few rare gems and because… well, it’s Frankenthaler.
This is a case of someone loving something too much that they cannot see it at all. It’s like standing with your nose pressed against your favorite work of art. How can you possibly see it? Nemerov does nothing but put Frankenthaler up on a pedestal, even embarrassingly insisting on referring to her as “Helen” throughout the book. (Eye roll)
Nemerov mixes biography with criticality and I’m not sure it works. His descriptions of her work are so vague in the attempts of being poetic that you can’t get a sense of what the work looks like. And in doing so he only feeds the issue her work has been accused of - and which he himself is trying to defend: light, feminine, non-serious, decorative. His writing is wet and does no one any favors. I found myself nauseously skipping over passages of description as if I was closing my eyes during a gruesome scene in a movie - if I don’t see it, it didn’t happen. He falls so short in leading us to understand Frankenthaler and what made her work so revolutionary and important. Instead she comes across as petty, short tempered and… lucky.
I heard a talk in which he awkwardly claimed that his take on her was one with a feminist stance. With this in mind I cringed while reading his description of her personality and her personal life.
It also only covers a decade of her life - UGH, really?! We are starving for Frankenthaler. Please! Making the decision to only cover the 1950’s, when she was young, emerging, and having fun love affairs. There is something about this choice that I find so sexist and tired. We never see her as a whole woman.
While there are a few enjoyable pieces of information in the book - stories of her drawing chalk lines from her childhood home to the playground behind the Met, dripping her mothers red lacquer nail polish into the bathroom sink full of water while watching it bloom and bleed as the sink drained, and reading about her oh so romantic relationship with Robert Motherwell - those rare gems made it worth the read. Also, being a fan of Frank O’Hara’s poetry I also loved hearing more about their friendship and Nemerov made some nice comparisons between his poetry and her painting.
Coming off the heals of reading Gail Levin’s biography of Lee Krasner, this book didn’t stand a chance. That book is so well done, if you like Kranser I recommend. If you want to read about Frankenthaler, “9th Street Women: Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell and Helen Frankenthaler: Five Painters and the Movement That Changed Modern Art” by Mary Gabriel is a truly epic documentation of New York in the 40’s and 50’s and the women painting during that time. I would also HIGHLY recommend Barbra Rose’s essay in the Helen Frankenthaler monograph (which is so beautiful). I haven’t read anything else that compares to Rose’s acute understanding and breadth of wisdom when it comes to Frankenthaler and her work. Mind-blowing. Also be sure to listen to the Getty’s “Recording Artists: Helen Frankenthaler, Let’er Rip” podcast with Barbara Rose and Cindy Nemser. Again, Rose and Nemser are so smart, and in it you hear some rare recordings of Frankenthaler speaking about her work.
3 stars - I wanted to love this book, and really didn’t. But stars for the few rare gems and because… well, it’s Frankenthaler.
May 17, 2022
I listened to this on audiobook, and the narrator was so terrible that I'm not sure what I think about the author's work. I suppose the fact that I made it to the end means that I found it interesting. But the person reading it used a bizarre voice for Frankenthaler, sounding like a bad Betty Davis impression slowed to half speed, which made every quote seem like the musings of a bitchy bored patrician. This is especially odd given that the author seems to like Frankenthaler and the narrator seems determined to make us dislike her.
July 18, 2021
Crashingly disappointing. I love Frankenthaler's art. I was really excited for this book. It did not deliver. The book has a "not like other girls" vibes. The book is disparaging, dismissive and degrading towards other female artists (Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell)of the time and place.
June 13, 2022
I was only slightly aware of Frankenthaler's work so this was a welcome introduction that pushed me to seek out other sources and resources but what I loved most in this book was its context. Frankenthaler both was and was not a product of her times--dramatically influenced by Jackson Pollack and the other artists of her time, but unlike most women of the 50s, maintaining a lifestyle that asserted the primacy of herself as artist.
Nemerov creates with an economical use of words the decade in which Frankenthaler came, artistically, of age. Unlike other artists, she came from afflluence and was better able to live out her vocation. At the same time, she shows a kind of ruthless dedication to her art--she left the care of her sick mother primarily to her sisters, much to their anger and frustration. She can seem cold in her single-minded pursuit of her art--but is that not the hallmark of most artists? Her sisters would probably have been more forgiving of Frankenthaler's emotional and physical absences if she had been a man. However, she seems indifferent to the judgments of others driven by her passion for painting.
The focus of the book is a look at a narrow piece of time--one in which a great deal was happening. Nemerov has to fill in a lot of the blanks for us, since Frankenthaler seems relatively uninterested (unlike most of the artists around her) in political events. So while the book presents a revealing picture of the New York art world of the 1950s, it is not anything close to a comprehensive look at the New York City of the time.
On the other hand, the title only promises a view of the artist and her time and place.
It is as well-written as a good novel and completely kept my interest. I found her cold yet fascinating and (as a New Yorker) the history of the art world of that time was greatly interesting.
Nemerov creates with an economical use of words the decade in which Frankenthaler came, artistically, of age. Unlike other artists, she came from afflluence and was better able to live out her vocation. At the same time, she shows a kind of ruthless dedication to her art--she left the care of her sick mother primarily to her sisters, much to their anger and frustration. She can seem cold in her single-minded pursuit of her art--but is that not the hallmark of most artists? Her sisters would probably have been more forgiving of Frankenthaler's emotional and physical absences if she had been a man. However, she seems indifferent to the judgments of others driven by her passion for painting.
The focus of the book is a look at a narrow piece of time--one in which a great deal was happening. Nemerov has to fill in a lot of the blanks for us, since Frankenthaler seems relatively uninterested (unlike most of the artists around her) in political events. So while the book presents a revealing picture of the New York art world of the 1950s, it is not anything close to a comprehensive look at the New York City of the time.
On the other hand, the title only promises a view of the artist and her time and place.
It is as well-written as a good novel and completely kept my interest. I found her cold yet fascinating and (as a New Yorker) the history of the art world of that time was greatly interesting.
March 25, 2021
The book is about Helen Frankenthaler, an artist. From her graduation from Bennington through the age of thirty-one, the story follows Helen when she had her first one-person exhibition. Over her life,. Helen became an American artist of the postwar period in New York in the 1950s. And this book shows us all the moments that influenced her art and her life.
There is a scene when Helen is feeling depressed after a bad review. "Starting around New Year's, 1953, Helen became depressed. She was paying sick calls to her mother, who was increasingly ill...Sinking into lethargy, Helen found herself thinking that in her whole life, nothing mattered very much. Even her psychoanalytic sessions on which she usually placed great store struck her as boring. She was 'not taking myself or life or plans too seriously.' Not caring enough, she found herself taking afternoon naps. 'The sleep is wonderful, but the habit bothers me. Helen was depressed because she felt like her life was at a standstill." This captures a moment when a legend is doubting herself.
I love that this is an Upper East Side book, and I spent a whole summer at Bennington, so I felt like I could experience Helen's journey. I also love how the author portrayed Helen as just another girl in her twenties in New York, yet she became an art legend.
To listen to my interview with the author, go to my podcast at:
https://zibbyowens.com/transcript/ale...
There is a scene when Helen is feeling depressed after a bad review. "Starting around New Year's, 1953, Helen became depressed. She was paying sick calls to her mother, who was increasingly ill...Sinking into lethargy, Helen found herself thinking that in her whole life, nothing mattered very much. Even her psychoanalytic sessions on which she usually placed great store struck her as boring. She was 'not taking myself or life or plans too seriously.' Not caring enough, she found herself taking afternoon naps. 'The sleep is wonderful, but the habit bothers me. Helen was depressed because she felt like her life was at a standstill." This captures a moment when a legend is doubting herself.
I love that this is an Upper East Side book, and I spent a whole summer at Bennington, so I felt like I could experience Helen's journey. I also love how the author portrayed Helen as just another girl in her twenties in New York, yet she became an art legend.
To listen to my interview with the author, go to my podcast at:
https://zibbyowens.com/transcript/ale...
April 5, 2021
Alexander Nemerov only covers the first part of Helen Frankenthaler’s life and career in his book, but these were formative years in the development of her art and important and often tumultuous ones in her personal life. Frankenthaler didn’t die until 2011 at the age of 83 so there is much more to be discovered, but certainly as an introduction to the artist and her work this book does a fine job. Nemerov’s passion for his subject comes over loud and clear, although to his credit he doesn’t let his obvious admiration prevent him from chronicling her character flaws. His descriptions of her paintings are illuminating and insightful – and for me very helpful. Although sometimes verging on a hagiography rather than a straight biography, I found the book an accessible and compelling read – although I have to admit that even with Nemerov’s excellent analysis of the work the paintings still leave me bemused and unconvinced of their merit.
August 22, 2021
Fluffy and self-indulgent book covering one period of the work of Frankenthaler (or “Helen,” as the author annoyingly refers to her throughout). She is a painter who deserves a serious, well researched biography. This is not it. You’ll find the copy I shelled our $27 for at Diversity Thrift for one dollar. Save your money.
April 13, 2022
One of my pet peeves is a so-called feminist biographical dive into a woman’s life that doesn’t complicate much of anything. The opening essay framed this work in a way that intrigued me, but ultimately it fell short. This biography does not represent or even allude to the woman who encouraged the NEA to cut funding for artists like Robert Mapplethorpe in a few decades.
September 19, 2022
A lot of people were upset that this book wasn't a different book, although Nemerov explicitly details what this book will be in the beginning. This is not a comprehensive biography of the artist, it is a case study that explores a formative decade that shaped her and her work. While the book pretends to be about specific single days, it's really more broad than that--Nemerov brings in earlier moments that shaped her, as well as later truths and comments that help to flesh out where Frankenthaler was during the 1950s. I enjoyed this view of Frankenthaler (or as Nemerov calls her, Helen), seeing her privileges and her tragedies and her triumphs. I greatly enjoyed this book.
June 6, 2022
Nemerov writes well, so I gave this biography an extra star even though it would get only three for my appreciation of it. Helen (to continue the author’s familiar tone) led a life of wealth and privilege undermined by tragedy and turmoil. (We only follow her to around age 40, but she lived until 2011.)
I very much enjoyed some of the art discussion, but found Helen and much of her elite set unpleasantly snooty and self-centered. What let me forgive some of that in her, not so much in the men around her, was how much harder it was in the 50s, 60s, 70s (and to a lesser extent now) for women to get equal credit and pay for their work or genius.
I very much enjoyed some of the art discussion, but found Helen and much of her elite set unpleasantly snooty and self-centered. What let me forgive some of that in her, not so much in the men around her, was how much harder it was in the 50s, 60s, 70s (and to a lesser extent now) for women to get equal credit and pay for their work or genius.
July 14, 2021
I really enjoyed this glimpse into a particularly creative period in the life of a painter that I’m fascinated with. I did find Nemerov’s overly familiar tone to be a bit cloying at times, and I wish I could have given this 3 1/2 stars, but I appreciate the depth of research and analysis he has clearly put into learning about the nuances of her life. You’ll enjoy it if you’re a fan of Helen’s work.
January 13, 2026
love a biographer who is suspicious of biography… I think there were a couple of strangely gendered takes & I always wonder how much critical distance you can have in biography / just generally thinking about someone else’s life but the book really made this little sliver of her twenties so enchanting and alive!!!! I want to TAKE IN THE EXPERIENCE OF LIFE now in my own
September 25, 2023
I loved this. I thought it was fascinating and very well written. Couldn't put it down!
July 19, 2022
I'd never heard of Helen Frankenthaler prior to seeing Fierce Poise offered on NetGally. I'm not as knowledgeable about art as I would like, and Helen's story sounded interesting, and the cover is just beautiful, so I requested it. Why not? I was so excited to dig in, and then I started reading the introduction.
The author has a bizarre and off-putting tone to his writing here, one that manages to be both obsequious and overly familiar. Nemerov talks about his lifelong love to Frankenthaler and her work, saying he feels a special connection with her because they both lived in a similar area for periods of their life, and his father was her English teacher for one year of school and attended a party with Frankenthaler's first serious romantic partner within a few days of the author's birth. It's bizarre and kind of creepy. But for all that he claims to have felt this awareness of her since before he could speak, and has wanted to write a book about her for twenty years, he admits that he never tried to meet her or interview her, not even during the ten years when his teaching job was only 45 minutes from her home at the time. Instead, he just presumes to be intimately familiar with her and her art, referring to her throughout the book as Helen, as a "token of the proximity I feel," explaining this familiarity at length in the introduction. The writing felt like something an unbalanced fan, or certainly at least an entitled rich white cisgender man, would write, and it put me off this book entirely.
So thank you to #NetGalley and Penguin for granting me an #advancedcopy of #FiercePoiseHelenFrankenthalerand1950sNewYork, but I will not be finishing this book.
The author has a bizarre and off-putting tone to his writing here, one that manages to be both obsequious and overly familiar. Nemerov talks about his lifelong love to Frankenthaler and her work, saying he feels a special connection with her because they both lived in a similar area for periods of their life, and his father was her English teacher for one year of school and attended a party with Frankenthaler's first serious romantic partner within a few days of the author's birth. It's bizarre and kind of creepy. But for all that he claims to have felt this awareness of her since before he could speak, and has wanted to write a book about her for twenty years, he admits that he never tried to meet her or interview her, not even during the ten years when his teaching job was only 45 minutes from her home at the time. Instead, he just presumes to be intimately familiar with her and her art, referring to her throughout the book as Helen, as a "token of the proximity I feel," explaining this familiarity at length in the introduction. The writing felt like something an unbalanced fan, or certainly at least an entitled rich white cisgender man, would write, and it put me off this book entirely.
So thank you to #NetGalley and Penguin for granting me an #advancedcopy of #FiercePoiseHelenFrankenthalerand1950sNewYork, but I will not be finishing this book.
April 10, 2021
(Content 4/ Narration 1) I quite enjoyed this curtailed account of Frankenthaler's life and painting during the decade of the 1950's, though I found I needed to accompany the poetical but sometimes rather abstract descriptions of particular works with Google searches of the images so I could fully absorb the insights. However, the book was nearly ruined for me by the Audible narrator who adopted a drawling, petulant, pretentious voice for Frankenthaler that made me want to slap her upside the head every time she opened her mouth. It seems quite a strange (and inevitably sexist) editorial decision to intentionally trivialize the main subject of a book by constantly emphasizing how annoying she was. Listening to it required conscious resistance to the parody I was being offered.
August 10, 2022
An interesting woman made remarkably boring.
February 1, 2022
“And maybe for the first time that fall Helen could actually take a deep breath and view her career in historical perspective, as an affair of beginnings, endings, and phases, a new one now under way. Her romance with [Clement] Greenberg was over, and now the artist Greenberg touted was dead. Helen's world was becoming bigger--the freedom that Pollock's work had granted her now ironically doubled because of the liberator's death.”
“You want clues? [Helen] asked a reporter who inquired about the meaning of her art. “There are no clues.”
I’ve loved Helen Frankenthaler’s artwork since I took an American modern art class in my sophomore year of college — I fell in love with the beautiful colors she used, how they seeped into the unprimed canvas, how she knew exactly what she was trying to accomplish, how she was friends with all of the other female modern artists of the time in what I like to call the “AbEx Girl Gang.” When I saw this book on her early career on the new releases shelf at my bookstore employer, I took a double take and knew I had to read this.
I really enjoyed the background information about Frankenthaler and the ideas behind her quite beautiful work, as well as the portrait of a young woman in her twenties trying to create something beautiful and meaningful that will last even beyond her lifetime. I admired Nemerov's multi-faceted view of Frankenthaler, as, yes, a rich white woman with family roots in New York City, giving her privileges that other Abstract Expressionist artists did not have, but also a woman with stunning artistic skills that (mostly) deserved her fame and praise. However, I did not like Nemerov's choice to include 4 full pages of Frankenthaler's ex-boyfriend's specific and cruel critiques of her body after they broke up in what is supposed to be a book about her talent and artwork, not how good she was in bed. It is sort of suspect, also, as other reviewers have said, that Nemerov only focused on the decade of her twenties, when she was young and hot and having exciting lives affairs, instead of her later years when she became a fully confident and accomplished woman. Sometimes, Nemerov's formal analysis of Frankenthaler’s (quite abstract) work was lacking. But, setting all of that aside, this was a very fun book to read about an artist I love dearly.
(3.5 stars)
“You want clues? [Helen] asked a reporter who inquired about the meaning of her art. “There are no clues.”
I’ve loved Helen Frankenthaler’s artwork since I took an American modern art class in my sophomore year of college — I fell in love with the beautiful colors she used, how they seeped into the unprimed canvas, how she knew exactly what she was trying to accomplish, how she was friends with all of the other female modern artists of the time in what I like to call the “AbEx Girl Gang.” When I saw this book on her early career on the new releases shelf at my bookstore employer, I took a double take and knew I had to read this.
I really enjoyed the background information about Frankenthaler and the ideas behind her quite beautiful work, as well as the portrait of a young woman in her twenties trying to create something beautiful and meaningful that will last even beyond her lifetime. I admired Nemerov's multi-faceted view of Frankenthaler, as, yes, a rich white woman with family roots in New York City, giving her privileges that other Abstract Expressionist artists did not have, but also a woman with stunning artistic skills that (mostly) deserved her fame and praise. However, I did not like Nemerov's choice to include 4 full pages of Frankenthaler's ex-boyfriend's specific and cruel critiques of her body after they broke up in what is supposed to be a book about her talent and artwork, not how good she was in bed. It is sort of suspect, also, as other reviewers have said, that Nemerov only focused on the decade of her twenties, when she was young and hot and having exciting lives affairs, instead of her later years when she became a fully confident and accomplished woman. Sometimes, Nemerov's formal analysis of Frankenthaler’s (quite abstract) work was lacking. But, setting all of that aside, this was a very fun book to read about an artist I love dearly.
(3.5 stars)
February 5, 2023
I did the mistake of getting the audio version on Audible! This audiobook is so badly read that in spite of the interesting characters portrayed and the interesting story it make this experience of listening to it excruciating. I am not sure why the reader provides a different tone and voice (definitely counterproductive and deeply annoying) to the main character quotes and
why
she
puts
long
innumerable
pauses
when
ever
as if reading a new line after each single words or some obscure bad poem.
As a professor of art history and fine art I strongly recommend you do not miss out on the remarkable life and production of Helen Frankenthaler but please do get a written text copy, whether digital or paper.
why
she
puts
long
innumerable
pauses
when
ever
as if reading a new line after each single words or some obscure bad poem.
As a professor of art history and fine art I strongly recommend you do not miss out on the remarkable life and production of Helen Frankenthaler but please do get a written text copy, whether digital or paper.
January 2, 2025
A colorful and brief biography of one of my favorite painters. Delves into the mythology of Helen's emergence as an abstract expressionist and how her personal and creative lives bled into one another. Would have loved to see more reference to her creative process.
October 22, 2024
An entirely enjoyable biography of one of America's greatest painters. It doesn't follow her entire life, but, instead, examines key moments that were crucial to her development. Loved every minute of this book.
July 27, 2021
I enjoyed the audiobook version, with some reservations about the approach of the narrator, who perhaps overplayed the detached remove of the artist a tad. As for content, I found the book informative and useful to me as a museum docent. I’d been fascinated with Frankenthaler’s methods for some time, and had a general awareness of her background and personal life, and this book filled in many blanks. Considering her family background and the times in which she lived, Frankenthaler exhibited not only a fierce poise, but a necessary focus and singlemindedness then required of independent career women. Having it all was not only uncommon, it wasn’t even a concept for most of her life. I came away from reading this biography a greater admirer of the artist and her oeuvre. She lived in interesting times and made the most of her talent, creativity and connections.
May 14, 2021
I really enjoyed reading this book. The reasons it didn't get a five from me are really beyond the author's control. Having recently read Mary Gabriel's brilliant "Ninth Street Women," I was already pretty familiar with this part of Frankenthaler's story. Also, by the end, I really wanted more!! C'mon Nemerov! Please write another book that takes us at least through the 60s! C'mon, man! But seriously, "Fierce Poise" did get an enthusiastic four from me because there was enough new information to keep me more than interested. Also, Nemerov is a beautiful writer. I loved how he skillfully weaved storytelling with beautiful and detailed descriptions of specific works - descriptions that were often lyrical. Highly recommended!
December 28, 2021
It’s the second female painter biography I read, and again - majority of it was focused on romantic relationships. Not art, unfortunately. Im not arguing that this is not important, but it just can’t be the only contributor to artistic expression.
May 14, 2021
I had just read Blake Gopnik's review in the "New Yorker" and a year ago read Mary Gabriel's "Ninth Street Women" (2018). https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... Both have blurbs on the jacket. Gabriel's is the more effusive. Gopnik's is the more misleading, inasmuch as his review was ambivalent in places. But my husband gave it to me for Mother's Day and I was in the mood for something not to long. My rating here is four stars, but I would have gone three and a half were it possible.
On the one hand I like Nemerov's choosing to approach Frankenthaler and her work from a very personal place. On the other hand, the book reads a little like journal entries mooning over the love never quite attained. Nemerov points out that he had countless opportunities over many years to meet Frankenthaler in person. Their social, creative and academic circles have considerable overlap. But he didn't.
Nemerov also uses his late-found adoration of Frankenthaler's paintings as a means for atoning for the rather snotty, abstruse intellectualism that marked cultural criticism and art history of a certain era. I get that. I belong to the same era and I had to come to terms with some of the same unfortunate bias. On the other hand, Nemerov takes a few shots at the schools of thought that dominated in the 1980s and 1990s into the aughts, methodologies that all but eliminated the matter of actually looking at works of art and engaging with their aesthetics. I'm entirely with him, there. I am irked in the extreme, however, that there is no bibliography. Apparently you are supposed to work your way through the notes. That's just cheating.
Nemerov focuses on Frankenthaler the emergent artist, the woman in her twenties during the nineteen-fifties. She was beautiful and privileged, spoiled by the adoration of her father, shielded from much and introduced to much thanks to family wealth. She was educated at a series of rarified and mainly all-women educational institutions. Her first and most key relationship was with a much older man, the critic Clement Greenberg. After that tempestuous five years, and a few spent with men more her own age, she married the also much older Robert Motherwell, a leading light of the first generation of Abstract Expressionists. I am not using these facts to undermine the nature of her accomplishments--but I am loath to claim that those relationships, connections, privileges and more had no impact on her development as an artist. Certainly, as Gabriel so wonderfully demonstrates in "Ninth Street Women," poverty, the weight of painter-husbands, and more has to be taken into consideration.
Nemerov makes rather a big deal of how he looked at Frankenthaler's paintings, how his ideas are embedded in that visual experience. I applaud the effort. I don't agree, however, that his visual skills are as acute as he thinks they are. He makes rather a big deal of a faint vertical line in "Open Wall" (1953), attributing both the scale of the whole and the fact of that detail to the ideas of Barnett Newman and especially his "zip" lines. Sure. That's one way to look at it. On the other hand, there is Cezanne and his areas of "passage" as well, something with which Frankenthaler would have been equally familiar. This despite the fact that he sees the overall composition as evocative of Cezanne's "Bathers" which Frankenthaler had seen at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 1952 while in the company of Clement Greenberg. A very comparable area is evident in "Blue Territory" (1955) and that goes unnoticed. Such is the danger of following only one's one thoughts as they occur and then leaving them behind.
Nemerov gets the reader through the fifties, one chapter at a time, by focusing on one day at a time. That conceit is really an arbitrary framework as it allows the writer to cherrypick an experience, an event, a catastrophe, and extrapolate from it the evidence that allows him to create the "Helen" of his imagination and longing that is at the center of the story.
But it is an excellent story. I am just sorry it left me liking her as a person almost not at all, and looking at her as an artist with a somewhat more jaundiced eye. I am pretty sure that wasn't the author's intention.
As a sort of postscript, the book reminded me of an exhibition at the Rose Museum at Brandeis University, "Frankenthaler: The Fifties." It was a marvelous show, pretty large. I took my students from Mt. Ida Junior College to see it, and assigned them a compare-contrast essay. Each student was to select the painting they liked the most, and the one they liked the least, and tell why. Got some pretty interesting results, as I recall. At the time I don't know that I thought much about it being the fifties. I'd love to go back and look. A catalog was published; maybe I'll scare up a copy.
On the one hand I like Nemerov's choosing to approach Frankenthaler and her work from a very personal place. On the other hand, the book reads a little like journal entries mooning over the love never quite attained. Nemerov points out that he had countless opportunities over many years to meet Frankenthaler in person. Their social, creative and academic circles have considerable overlap. But he didn't.
Nemerov also uses his late-found adoration of Frankenthaler's paintings as a means for atoning for the rather snotty, abstruse intellectualism that marked cultural criticism and art history of a certain era. I get that. I belong to the same era and I had to come to terms with some of the same unfortunate bias. On the other hand, Nemerov takes a few shots at the schools of thought that dominated in the 1980s and 1990s into the aughts, methodologies that all but eliminated the matter of actually looking at works of art and engaging with their aesthetics. I'm entirely with him, there. I am irked in the extreme, however, that there is no bibliography. Apparently you are supposed to work your way through the notes. That's just cheating.
Nemerov focuses on Frankenthaler the emergent artist, the woman in her twenties during the nineteen-fifties. She was beautiful and privileged, spoiled by the adoration of her father, shielded from much and introduced to much thanks to family wealth. She was educated at a series of rarified and mainly all-women educational institutions. Her first and most key relationship was with a much older man, the critic Clement Greenberg. After that tempestuous five years, and a few spent with men more her own age, she married the also much older Robert Motherwell, a leading light of the first generation of Abstract Expressionists. I am not using these facts to undermine the nature of her accomplishments--but I am loath to claim that those relationships, connections, privileges and more had no impact on her development as an artist. Certainly, as Gabriel so wonderfully demonstrates in "Ninth Street Women," poverty, the weight of painter-husbands, and more has to be taken into consideration.
Nemerov makes rather a big deal of how he looked at Frankenthaler's paintings, how his ideas are embedded in that visual experience. I applaud the effort. I don't agree, however, that his visual skills are as acute as he thinks they are. He makes rather a big deal of a faint vertical line in "Open Wall" (1953), attributing both the scale of the whole and the fact of that detail to the ideas of Barnett Newman and especially his "zip" lines. Sure. That's one way to look at it. On the other hand, there is Cezanne and his areas of "passage" as well, something with which Frankenthaler would have been equally familiar. This despite the fact that he sees the overall composition as evocative of Cezanne's "Bathers" which Frankenthaler had seen at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 1952 while in the company of Clement Greenberg. A very comparable area is evident in "Blue Territory" (1955) and that goes unnoticed. Such is the danger of following only one's one thoughts as they occur and then leaving them behind.
Nemerov gets the reader through the fifties, one chapter at a time, by focusing on one day at a time. That conceit is really an arbitrary framework as it allows the writer to cherrypick an experience, an event, a catastrophe, and extrapolate from it the evidence that allows him to create the "Helen" of his imagination and longing that is at the center of the story.
But it is an excellent story. I am just sorry it left me liking her as a person almost not at all, and looking at her as an artist with a somewhat more jaundiced eye. I am pretty sure that wasn't the author's intention.
As a sort of postscript, the book reminded me of an exhibition at the Rose Museum at Brandeis University, "Frankenthaler: The Fifties." It was a marvelous show, pretty large. I took my students from Mt. Ida Junior College to see it, and assigned them a compare-contrast essay. Each student was to select the painting they liked the most, and the one they liked the least, and tell why. Got some pretty interesting results, as I recall. At the time I don't know that I thought much about it being the fifties. I'd love to go back and look. A catalog was published; maybe I'll scare up a copy.
July 13, 2021
“A work is great when you are uplifted,” Helen said, “when you gain a sense of order within the work and within yourself.” pg. 47
✨
Fierce Poise: Helen Frankenthaler and 1950s New York: by Alexander Nemerov guides us through Helen Frankenthalers early, and most crucial developmental, years in her life and career. Nemerov takes a personal and biographical yet critical approach of introducing us to Frankenthaler's life as well as her works.
You can tell through his passionate phrases, and referring her by her last name throughout the book instead of by her last name, how much he admires and appreciates Helen's art work, powerful personality and relationships.
✨
I do hope that he decides to possibly write an afterward or another biography of Helen's life after she turned 40. I did appreciate that he stopped at her 40th birthday, even though biographies generally end at the end of a persons life, the ending point being at her 40th birthday when Helen felt her most confident and happy, was a nice halt and archival of a positive point in her past. As stated towards the end of Chapter 11 and the CODA chapter "I saw her many times in all sorts of settings and I always found real beauty in her being. She had a beauty in her movements and how she placed herself, whether standing, walking or sitting" The beauty was "physical, yes" but also that of a radiant soul." pg. 215 and "Helen glowed because she was happy, she glowed because she had looked frankly fortieth birthday party which took place two months before the Whitney show". pg. 216
✨
From the Life magazine photos of Helen posing with her work and the photographs of her dancing her paint onto the canvas, you can tell she is as radiant as her friends describe her. With the biography ending on a note when Helen, at least from her friends and family perspective, appeared to be at her happiest and most radiant, was a lovely homage and tribute to the Frankenthaler.
✨
If you are looking to learn more about Helen Frankenthaler and Post-war 1950's New York art scene, this biography is a good introduction. Highly recommend! ✨
✨
Fierce Poise: Helen Frankenthaler and 1950s New York: by Alexander Nemerov guides us through Helen Frankenthalers early, and most crucial developmental, years in her life and career. Nemerov takes a personal and biographical yet critical approach of introducing us to Frankenthaler's life as well as her works.
You can tell through his passionate phrases, and referring her by her last name throughout the book instead of by her last name, how much he admires and appreciates Helen's art work, powerful personality and relationships.
✨
I do hope that he decides to possibly write an afterward or another biography of Helen's life after she turned 40. I did appreciate that he stopped at her 40th birthday, even though biographies generally end at the end of a persons life, the ending point being at her 40th birthday when Helen felt her most confident and happy, was a nice halt and archival of a positive point in her past. As stated towards the end of Chapter 11 and the CODA chapter "I saw her many times in all sorts of settings and I always found real beauty in her being. She had a beauty in her movements and how she placed herself, whether standing, walking or sitting" The beauty was "physical, yes" but also that of a radiant soul." pg. 215 and "Helen glowed because she was happy, she glowed because she had looked frankly fortieth birthday party which took place two months before the Whitney show". pg. 216
✨
From the Life magazine photos of Helen posing with her work and the photographs of her dancing her paint onto the canvas, you can tell she is as radiant as her friends describe her. With the biography ending on a note when Helen, at least from her friends and family perspective, appeared to be at her happiest and most radiant, was a lovely homage and tribute to the Frankenthaler.
✨
If you are looking to learn more about Helen Frankenthaler and Post-war 1950's New York art scene, this biography is a good introduction. Highly recommend! ✨
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 2, 2021
Who was Helen Frankenthaler?
Alexander Nemerov begins his book Fierce Poise, explaining that for many years, he (and his colleagues), were critical, as well as sceptical of the accolades Helen Frankenthaler, the modern abstract painter and creator of the soak and stain method of painting, received. It was only many years later, Nemerov says, that he came to appreciate her work for its magical properties, as he describes so beautifully, she was able to capture the joy of a moment and transfer it to the canvas so that it comes alive.
Nemerov describes Frankenthaler's early years. Unlike most artists, Helen was born into a wealthy Jewish family in NYC. Money was never an issue for her. The youngest of three sisters, she was the apple of her father's eye. She never ceased to amaze him, and he was certain she would achieve greatness. Her mother, on the other hand, craved attention, and always overshadowed Helen (personality clash). Helen's College years were spent away from the city with like minded women at Bennington College, in Vermont, where she received her art instruction from Paul Feeley. After college, and a visit to Europe, Helen returned to NYC to start her career. At her first (non solo) exhibit, she meets the famous art critic, Clem Greenberg, more then 10 years her senior. He immediately recognizes Helen's potential. He takes her under his wing, and in 1950-51, together with Clem, Helen enters the world of modern abstract painting. It was Clem who took Helen to Jackson Pollok's studio, where she has a revelation that leads her to create her soak stain method of painting.
Fierce Poise focuses on Helen Frankenthaler in her first decade, (1950-1960), as a modern abstract artist, from Mountain and Sea in 1952, to, Before the Caves in 1958. But, Helen Frankenthaler continued to paint (as well as create art in many other mediums), her entire life.
I love this book as a solid introduction to a major contributor, to the field of modern art. Nemerov does a wonderful job bringing Helen to life in the pages of his book, so much so, I'd go to an exhibit of her work tomorrow, if I could (pandemic makes this an impossibilty). For now then, thanks to this book and the internet, I've garnered an appreciation and respect for Helen Frankenthaler VIRTUALLY.
Thank you #netgalley and @penguinpress for my complimentary copy of #fiercepoisehelenfrankenthalerand1950snewyork in return for my honest review. #5stars
Alexander Nemerov begins his book Fierce Poise, explaining that for many years, he (and his colleagues), were critical, as well as sceptical of the accolades Helen Frankenthaler, the modern abstract painter and creator of the soak and stain method of painting, received. It was only many years later, Nemerov says, that he came to appreciate her work for its magical properties, as he describes so beautifully, she was able to capture the joy of a moment and transfer it to the canvas so that it comes alive.
Nemerov describes Frankenthaler's early years. Unlike most artists, Helen was born into a wealthy Jewish family in NYC. Money was never an issue for her. The youngest of three sisters, she was the apple of her father's eye. She never ceased to amaze him, and he was certain she would achieve greatness. Her mother, on the other hand, craved attention, and always overshadowed Helen (personality clash). Helen's College years were spent away from the city with like minded women at Bennington College, in Vermont, where she received her art instruction from Paul Feeley. After college, and a visit to Europe, Helen returned to NYC to start her career. At her first (non solo) exhibit, she meets the famous art critic, Clem Greenberg, more then 10 years her senior. He immediately recognizes Helen's potential. He takes her under his wing, and in 1950-51, together with Clem, Helen enters the world of modern abstract painting. It was Clem who took Helen to Jackson Pollok's studio, where she has a revelation that leads her to create her soak stain method of painting.
Fierce Poise focuses on Helen Frankenthaler in her first decade, (1950-1960), as a modern abstract artist, from Mountain and Sea in 1952, to, Before the Caves in 1958. But, Helen Frankenthaler continued to paint (as well as create art in many other mediums), her entire life.
I love this book as a solid introduction to a major contributor, to the field of modern art. Nemerov does a wonderful job bringing Helen to life in the pages of his book, so much so, I'd go to an exhibit of her work tomorrow, if I could (pandemic makes this an impossibilty). For now then, thanks to this book and the internet, I've garnered an appreciation and respect for Helen Frankenthaler VIRTUALLY.
Thank you #netgalley and @penguinpress for my complimentary copy of #fiercepoisehelenfrankenthalerand1950snewyork in return for my honest review. #5stars
May 24, 2021
An exceptional snapshot of the life and work of the incomparable Helen Frankenthaler.
I call this a snapshot because it isn’t really a biography, focusing mostly on a single decade and touching briefly on the details of the artist’s life before and after that time.
This sort of close examination is long overdue for Frankenthaler, whose work fell out of favor 40 years ago for being either too girly or not girly enough, depending who was doing the critiquing. She remains one of the least revered of the AbEx movement, always taking a backseat to the likes of Rothko, Newman, Pollock, and her own husband Robert Motherwell.
Frankenthaler has been both an art world darling and dismissed as derivative and dull, depending on what that particular era’s criticism wants us to feel about art. And female artists. Frankenthaler suffered more of this than most AbEx painters, mostly because she was a woman, but even more so because she was a woman who didn’t fit into the two boxes to which critics assigned female artists: Ingenue or consummate rebel.
The confident, assertive, and measured Frankenthaler was neither of those things, and her art thusly doesn’t fit the formula. The fact that she was wealthy and attractive made her a magnet for further dismissive criticism perpetuated by the ridiculous myth that one has to suffer to produce good art. And as we learn in reading Fierce Poise, Frankenthaler faced plenty of adversity and heartbreak in her life. But like many strong women, she is depicted as petty and cold for handling it stoically.
Her work is a good lesson in the concept that art doesn’t have to mean something or send a message to be good, and Nemerov did a solid job of stressing this point. I also applaud the author’s restraint in keeping this relatively short, as is almost always a plus in an artist bio.
*I received an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.*
I call this a snapshot because it isn’t really a biography, focusing mostly on a single decade and touching briefly on the details of the artist’s life before and after that time.
This sort of close examination is long overdue for Frankenthaler, whose work fell out of favor 40 years ago for being either too girly or not girly enough, depending who was doing the critiquing. She remains one of the least revered of the AbEx movement, always taking a backseat to the likes of Rothko, Newman, Pollock, and her own husband Robert Motherwell.
Frankenthaler has been both an art world darling and dismissed as derivative and dull, depending on what that particular era’s criticism wants us to feel about art. And female artists. Frankenthaler suffered more of this than most AbEx painters, mostly because she was a woman, but even more so because she was a woman who didn’t fit into the two boxes to which critics assigned female artists: Ingenue or consummate rebel.
The confident, assertive, and measured Frankenthaler was neither of those things, and her art thusly doesn’t fit the formula. The fact that she was wealthy and attractive made her a magnet for further dismissive criticism perpetuated by the ridiculous myth that one has to suffer to produce good art. And as we learn in reading Fierce Poise, Frankenthaler faced plenty of adversity and heartbreak in her life. But like many strong women, she is depicted as petty and cold for handling it stoically.
Her work is a good lesson in the concept that art doesn’t have to mean something or send a message to be good, and Nemerov did a solid job of stressing this point. I also applaud the author’s restraint in keeping this relatively short, as is almost always a plus in an artist bio.
*I received an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.*
January 1, 2023
This is not a complete biography, its focus is a 10-year period (the 1950s) that shaped the career of an artist, Helen Frankenthaler.
I knew practically nothing about Helen Frankenthaler before this book. Of course, what I knew about abstract painting in the 1950s could be written in bold letters on the back of a credit card. Now I guess I know a little more.
Helen is interesting, though she comes across as distant, aloof, and somewhat muted. She seemed to have no end to confidence, brought about, I suppose, by being independently wealthy and perhaps a little spoiled as a child. Her confidence comes across as a kind of armor that allowed her to plunge forward with what she wanted to do in defiance of the received wisdom of the time about what was an appropriate path in life for a young woman. Good on her for doing her own thing, though I’m not sure I truly got to know her in this book.
I can certainly understand Helen’s creative impulse, but it’s hard to relate to somebody who grew up with wealth and had all the money she required and then floated it to the top of the art world without much apparent struggle. This is a state of being that’s completely alien to me, though I wouldn’t mind giving it a try, just to see how it feels.
I guess this was an interesting dive into the artistic community in New York during that time, though I found the account perhaps a little slow-moving. This could easily have been condensed into a long-form magazine article and not lost a whole lot.
It wasn’t too long, however so I guess it was worthwhile.
I knew practically nothing about Helen Frankenthaler before this book. Of course, what I knew about abstract painting in the 1950s could be written in bold letters on the back of a credit card. Now I guess I know a little more.
Helen is interesting, though she comes across as distant, aloof, and somewhat muted. She seemed to have no end to confidence, brought about, I suppose, by being independently wealthy and perhaps a little spoiled as a child. Her confidence comes across as a kind of armor that allowed her to plunge forward with what she wanted to do in defiance of the received wisdom of the time about what was an appropriate path in life for a young woman. Good on her for doing her own thing, though I’m not sure I truly got to know her in this book.
I can certainly understand Helen’s creative impulse, but it’s hard to relate to somebody who grew up with wealth and had all the money she required and then floated it to the top of the art world without much apparent struggle. This is a state of being that’s completely alien to me, though I wouldn’t mind giving it a try, just to see how it feels.
I guess this was an interesting dive into the artistic community in New York during that time, though I found the account perhaps a little slow-moving. This could easily have been condensed into a long-form magazine article and not lost a whole lot.
It wasn’t too long, however so I guess it was worthwhile.
March 7, 2024
If given half star increments, I would rank this at 3.5.
While I did not love this book (too fawning), it was worth reading. The interactions of the New York artists of the fifties was interesting, as well as learning some names unknown to me (further research).
Art history always fascinates me; knowing more about the era, art, and artists, has led to increased appreciation.
Women have struggled to be recognized as artists equal to men for centuries. Helen Frankenthaler fought for that recognition, as did other female artists of her acquaintance. Most likely, it is due to the focus of a biography in general, that we are presented with a determined young woman in her twenties and early thirties. Helen seems exceptionally childish. Raised in New York, upper-middle class wealth and recognition, she seemed unprepared for maturity. Her sisters embraced their roles as young brides, wives, mothers, which Helen wanted no part. Her goal at a young age was to be a successful, recognized artist. Her lack of financial concerns, and undoubtedly her personality, allowed her to remain immature longer than her contemporaries.
We are the sum of our history. Helen was traumatized by the death of her father. She carried this heartbreak nearby, along with other losses, well into her thirties. Perhaps maturity appeared too devastating to Helen until then.
While I did not love this book (too fawning), it was worth reading. The interactions of the New York artists of the fifties was interesting, as well as learning some names unknown to me (further research).
Art history always fascinates me; knowing more about the era, art, and artists, has led to increased appreciation.
Women have struggled to be recognized as artists equal to men for centuries. Helen Frankenthaler fought for that recognition, as did other female artists of her acquaintance. Most likely, it is due to the focus of a biography in general, that we are presented with a determined young woman in her twenties and early thirties. Helen seems exceptionally childish. Raised in New York, upper-middle class wealth and recognition, she seemed unprepared for maturity. Her sisters embraced their roles as young brides, wives, mothers, which Helen wanted no part. Her goal at a young age was to be a successful, recognized artist. Her lack of financial concerns, and undoubtedly her personality, allowed her to remain immature longer than her contemporaries.
We are the sum of our history. Helen was traumatized by the death of her father. She carried this heartbreak nearby, along with other losses, well into her thirties. Perhaps maturity appeared too devastating to Helen until then.
October 12, 2022
This spoke to the artsy bit of my brain. I enjoyed learning about the art scene around Helen and her contemporaries, and the nature of the then-new, abstract expressionism.
I actually almost put this down a time or two. It wasn't Fantastic. Also, I was looking up art pieces online right and left. Yes, it's cost prohibitive, but I would have loved a picture of every painting that he referred to, Helen's and otherwise.
Bits of quotes and/or thoughts while reading:
-The act of painting, not the production of a commodity
-The 'moment' of art -very wabi sabi
-lonely souls
-While she's 'in her head' produces thoughtful art, but it's dangerous to live there. (In one's head.)
-The pieces reflect whatever mood was upon her when she worked. (Implies time set aside to paint/write whatever the mood. Also, the need to paint/write as a mental health processing necessity. Like a workout for some.)
-"Childhood art contains an inscrutable beguiling power."
-Art for art's sake, vs art to entice a purchaser.
It's more of a 3.5 on the actual book, but I haven't been to a museum in a while, and this felt a bit like a day at the museum. I went to the same headspace, and sometimes, it's quite nice to be there.
I actually almost put this down a time or two. It wasn't Fantastic. Also, I was looking up art pieces online right and left. Yes, it's cost prohibitive, but I would have loved a picture of every painting that he referred to, Helen's and otherwise.
Bits of quotes and/or thoughts while reading:
-The act of painting, not the production of a commodity
-The 'moment' of art -very wabi sabi
-lonely souls
-While she's 'in her head' produces thoughtful art, but it's dangerous to live there. (In one's head.)
-The pieces reflect whatever mood was upon her when she worked. (Implies time set aside to paint/write whatever the mood. Also, the need to paint/write as a mental health processing necessity. Like a workout for some.)
-"Childhood art contains an inscrutable beguiling power."
-Art for art's sake, vs art to entice a purchaser.
It's more of a 3.5 on the actual book, but I haven't been to a museum in a while, and this felt a bit like a day at the museum. I went to the same headspace, and sometimes, it's quite nice to be there.
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