Ninth Street Women
Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, and Helen Frankenthaler: Five Painters and the Movement That Changed Modern Art
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Ninth Street Women
Narrated by:
Lisa Stathoplos
Buy Now for £28.56
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Narrated by:
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Lisa Stathoplos
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By:
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Mary Gabriel
About this listen
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.
Critic reviews
"A gorgeous and unsettling narrative...Ninth Street Women is supremely gratifying, generous, and lush but also tough and precise -- in other words, as complicated and capacious as the lives it depicts...It's as if once Gabriel got started, the canvas before her opened up new vistas. We should be grateful she yielded to its possibilities."—Jennifer Szalai, New York Times
"Ninth Street Women is like a great, sprawling Russian novel, filled with memorable characters and sharply etched scenes. It's no mean feat to breathe life into five very different and very brave women, none of whom gave a whit about conventional mores. But Ms. Gabriel fleshes out her portraits with intimate details, astute analyses of the art and good old-fashioned storytelling."—Ann Landi, Wall Street Journal
"Ninth Street Women is a must read...Gabriel seamlessly weaves the intimate and the public, the lives and the art, making us feel we were there...It is a story that is a part of the American story, told here in vivid, meaningful detail, an absolutely pivotal text."—Margaret Randall, Women's Review of Books
"Gabriel's fascinating group portrait shimmers with vivid personal detail...She traces their interwoven paths from studio to Cedar Bar to the Eight Street loft known as the Club...Over time, Willem de Kooning outshone Elaine; Jackson Pollock eclipsed Krasner. Key contributions were erased...Gabriel makes sure these major artists who have been written out of history are not forgotten."—Jane Ciabattari, BBC.com
"Masterful. Mixing critical insight with juicy storytelling, Mary Gabriel brings five brilliant female painters to the fore of the art revolution that cut a wide swath in postwar America."—Patricia Albers, author of Joan Mitchell: Lady Painter
"Gripping and enthralling, Mary Gabriel made me share every turbulent moment of these remarkable women's lives. A magisterial reference, this book will be the definitive text for years to come. It is also the most devastatingly accurate portrayal of five women who had the temerity to call themselves artists in the male-dominated twentieth century."—Deirdre Bair, author of Al Capone: His Life, Legacy, and Legend
"I loved every page of this necessary book. At last we see such once-sidelined artists as Joan Mitchell and Elaine de Kooning in depth, and both the telling gossip of their lives and the brave authenticity of their work are thrilling. Mary Gabriel restores the humanist ambition at the core of all the New York painters of this era, whether male or female--the boldness of their risky lives and the seriousness of their noble enterprise."—Brad Gooch, author of Rumi's Secret: The Life of the Sufi Poet of Love
The book is great but the audio a bit rubbish, still worth the purchase though.
V v inspiring.
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Fascinating!
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So now I'm eating the hat I haven't got because while this is very definitely art focused, that's essentially the vehicle for an understanding of the politics, the place of women, and the life styles of people like them and the ones around them from the early 1900s to the death of the last surviving woman artist of the group in 2011.
They lived every kind of life; rich and poor, drunk and sober, drugged and clean. They were promiscuous and adventurous; they travelled, they saw wars and some of the men fought in them. Lives of excess and of near starvation.
Critically, and running through all of this is the recurring theme of whether women could be artists at all, never mind good ones, world-leading ones, or innovators. So often they were subjugated to their partners - the likes of Jackson Pollock and Bill de Kooning - and denied exhibitions in their own right. But they were also fighters; women who kept going against the odds, often picking up their drunken, debilitated men folk at the same time and propping them up long enough to make another painting. It reads as an exotic time; unique and with all the flamboyance of youth that never quite died even as they did.
My impression of this book, and my engagement with it is influenced hugely by the narrator, Lisa Stathoplos, whose style carries drama without acting, gives life without over-blowing things, and never over or under emphasises any phrase, word, or even syllable.
I know more now about this period of time, its social and political context, than I ever would have discovered or had any drive to discover otherwise. So art or no art, it was a revelation. I suspect those of us born later than these women might have thought we were the first to be feisty and to start breaking into men's worlds with challenges about equality, but these women were doing that without a voice, without a movement, without even a word - feminism - to bind them to each other. Gregarious party animals as they all seemed to be, at root they were all insular when it came to doing what drove them most - their art. I'm very glad to have had this book nudged in my direction and more than happy to nudge it in yours.
Unexpectedly astonishing
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It took me 2 winters, on and off, to get through war & peace, despite its geniality; I listened to 'Ninth Street Women' in basically 1 month.
This is how History should be told: through multiple characters that cross each other's paths; describing their lifestyle and thoughts in such a vivid way one can imagine sitting at the table with them; and criss-crossing story plots with major world events in a way both become more alive than ever before.
This story is the one of an artistic movement: abstract expressionism; all the major male artists are mentioned, but for once they are not the center: Gabriel's in-depth telling of the events is one centered around the often forgotten women who, at the time, painted, lived and exhibited in an EQUAL footing to their male contemporaries. Beautifully woven into the story is the ever-changing role and perception of women during the 20th Century - all, from feminist waves to the objectification of their bodies and negation of their minds - serving the greater good of political strategies.
Maybe Gabriel tried to include too much: endless side stories and interesting facts, but the moments are rare when the book wasn't engaging enough to make me press pause and research the various pieces and poems mentioned, rather than wishing she got on with the major plot.
On the down side is the audio: there seem to be two different recordings of the book and a very random editing at points. In one of the recordings, the narrator is lively and engaging - luckily this is the case in about 90% of the book - while in the other the voice is sluggish and monotone. Strange.
It is also worth mentioning - to any one who might be able to change it - that a random part of the last chapter is currently being repeated after the credits.
Voice editing aside, I found the book should be worth at least 2 credits.
An gem that goes far beyond its title
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I find the narration easy to listen to and am enjoying it on audio contrary to other reviewers. Highly recommended.
Super inspired
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