Helen Frankenthaler: Painting History, Writing Painting

This ground-breaking and extraordinary examination of the work of Abstract Expressionist painter Helen Frankenthaler overturns assumptions about the artist, whose work has been burdened by its label as ’the bridge between Pollock and what was possible’. Trained as a painter, Alison Rowley brings a keen eye to Frankenthaler’s paintings, returning to the fore the artist’s debt not only to Jackson Pollock but also to Cezanne, and speculating for the first time as to her 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 novel To the Lighthouse, this beautifully written book provides crucial insights into Frankenthaler’s practice.

With her bold and radical painting now appearing in major international exhibitions, this paperback re-issue of Rowley’s original 2007 study comes at a significant moment of reappraisal, and confirms Frankenthaler’s status as one of the most important artists of her generation.

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