Art
What Should We Call the Great Women Artists?
Imagine if Berthe Morisot had been known as Berthe Manet.
Helen Frankenthaler
Books
New Helen Frankenthaler Biography Favors Nostalgia Over Artist’s Interiority
In Fierce Poise, the paternalistic attitude toward Frankenthaler undermines both the author’s gifts and the artist’s.
Art
The Visual Magic of Helen Frankenthaler’s Los Angeles Prints
In 1979, Frankenthaler traveled to the West Coast and was introduced to the gallery and studio Mixografia, where she would eventually produce a series of serene and exuberant prints.
Art
Color Field, Then and Now
I fear that the visual culture in which these works were admired is now one of those distant “you had to be there” moments, which are impossible to reconstruct.
Art
A Podcast on Radical Women Unearths Rare Interviews With Alice Neel, Betye Saar, and More
This season of the Recording Artists podcast, hosted by Helen Molesworth, explores what it has meant to be a woman and artist through the lives of six iconic artists.
Art
How Helen Frankenthaler’s Coastal Escapes Shaped Her Paintings
The summer hues of coastal Massachusetts deeply influenced Frankenthaler; its landscapes and seashores would become her muses for more than a decade.
Art
Navigating the Overload at the Venice Biennale
The Venice Biennale’s official exhibition, May You Live In Interesting Times, presents art that speaks to the present, not in the direct fashion of journalism, but in ways that can challenge existing habits of thought.
Art
The Colors of the Sixties
Spilling Over: Painting in the 1960s at the Whitney Museum expands the common understanding of a pivot point in American art, while basking unapologetically in the pure pleasure of looking.
Art
The Met’s Wrong Turn on Revisionism
When an exhibition is as puzzling as this one, it’s useful to step aside and reflect.
Books
How the Mythic Heroines of the New York School Changed Modern Art
Mary Gabriel charts the Abstract Expressionist movement through the lives of its five most prominent female painters in her newest work of biography, Ninth Street Women.
Art
The Common Threads Between Female Quilters and Abstract Expressionists
At one time or other these women's craft was either considered lowbrow or was measured against the work of male contemporaries.
Art
The Pursuit of Art, 2017
A year of truth-telling and electric painting.