Ninth Street Women

Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, and Helen Frankenthaler: Five Painters and the Movement That Changed Modern Art

By: Mary Gabriel

Narrated by: Lisa Stathoplos

Five women revolutionize the modern art world in postwar America in this "gratifying, generous, and lush" true story from a National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize finalist (Jennifer Szalai, New York Times).

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

Perfect don’t hesitate

Absolutely beautiful book and great narration.I wish I didn’t wait so long to get it

Great book but for me, a cloying reader.

What a great story of a fabled time in American art. Wonderful details and pieces of information that I had not known.

Great book

This book brings you right into the lives of the artists of the time. I especially liked all of the social details which gave me a better understanding of how women were perceived and treated. It's amazing that things haven't changed all that much.

Fascinating! I didn’t want it to end.

I’m an artist and art teacher who has always hated art history other than visiting museums. But this opened up art history for me as never before. It’s not just about the women and their art it is about so much more, historical context, political context, artistic context and personal story. I want more!

Ninth Street Women? More like Ninth Street Men and Women

I wanted to go into this rabbit hole of women artists because I feel like it’s been very overlooked in art history. While I did thoroughly enjoy the contents and information given throughout Ninth Street Women, I think my main gripe is that it goes into heavy detail into the men at the time, using the woman moreso as a point to return to every here and then. I learned a helluva more about Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning than I did of Lee Krasner or Elaine de Kooning. The ending of the book is also very, rushed (as rushed as a non-fiction book can get with a sudden cramming of decades into 1 hour compared to the slow stretch of the entire book before). Wish that it was a slow stretch all the way through; would’ve been longer, but this book was good at that until the end.