BOOK:Ninth Street Women-Little, Brown and Company

Set in postwar New York, “Ninth Street Women”, published by Little, Brown and Company, is an impassioned historical chronicle of five women who dared to enter the male-dominated world of abstract painting, not as muses, but as artists. From the 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 romantically involved with Jackson Pollock. Elaine de Kooning, whose brilliant mind and charm made her the magnanimous 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 to become one of the boldest painters of her generation. Joan Mitchell, whose notoriously tough exterior shielded a compassionate artist within, escaped a privileged but emotionally damaging childhood in Chicago to translate her fierce vision into magnificent canvases. And Helen Frankenthaler, the 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 (Color Field painting). These women changed American art and society, tearing up the prevailing social code and replacing it with a doctrine of liberation. In this book, the 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.–Efi Michalarou