Overview

This ground-breaking and extraordinary examination of the work of colour field painter Helen Frankenthaler overturns familiar assumptions about the artist which focus on her reputation as 'the bridge between Pollock and what was possible'. Trained as a painter, Alison Rowley brings a keen eye to Frankenthaler's paintings, highlighting the artist's debt not only to Jackson Pollock but also to Cézanne, and speculating for the first time as to Frankenthaler's artistic responses to wider political events, in particular the Rosenberg trial. Making a fascinating case, too, for the connections between the 'breakthrough' work Mountains and Sea and Lily Briscoe's painting in Virginia Woolf's infamous novel To the Lighthouse, this beautifully written book provides crucial, and still highly relevant, insights into Frankenthaler's practice.

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9781350297036

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Reviews

By offering a profound re-viewing and perceptive contextualisation of two of Helen Frankenthaler’s seminal paintings from the 1950s: Mountain and Sea and Eden, Alison Rowley expands feminist scholarship and challenges the established canon of modernist art history. Grounded in the author’s deep intellectual curiosity and her intimate comprehension of the creative process, the production of knowledge and the formation of subjectivity, the book stimulates new and nuanced insights into the practice and life of one of the major American postwar painters. This re-engagement with Frankenthaler’s work is critical reading for anyone interested in the writing of art history. * Kerstin Mey, Professor of Visual Culture, University of Limerick, Ireland *

By offering a profound re-viewing and perceptive contextualisation of two of Helen Frankenthaler's seminal paintings from the 1950s: Mountain and Sea and Eden, Alison Rowley expands feminist scholarship and challenges the established canon of modernist art history. Grounded in the author's deep intellectual curiosity and her intimate comprehension of the creative process, the production of knowledge and the formation of subjectivity, the book stimulates new and nuanced insights into the practice and life of one of the major American postwar painters. This re-engagement with Frankenthaler's work is critical reading for anyone interested in the writing of art history. * Kerstin Mey, Professor of Visual Culture, University of Limerick, Ireland *

Author Information

Alison Rowley is Senior Lecturer at the School of Art and Design, University of Ulster, Belfast, UK.

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