Helen Frankenthaler

Reviews / Votes

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 * Working with a painter's visual acuity and imagination, Alison Rowley makes links across chronologies, art forms, and continents, which she then explores in forensic detail and lucid language. This book demonstrates why Helen Frankenthaler's work both demands close attention from a feminist standpoint, and why the discipline of Art History alone is insufficient for it. * Hilary Robinson, Professor of Feminism, Art, and Theory, Loughborough University, UK *