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 20th-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 23, 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.

©2018 Mary Gabriel (P)2019 Hachette Audio

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

"More than a compilation of biographical tales, Gabriel's book is a reminder of the importance of women to an artistic genre long associated with masculinity. But it is also is a vivid portrait of the very nature of the artist. The stars of the era suffered and sinned as mortals, but their works -- and their creative appetites -- were otherworldly. Ninth Street Women gets us a just a little bit closer to their galaxy."—Karen Sandstrom, Washington Post

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.

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.

Perfect don’t hesitate

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

Addicted to this book

I have listened to this twice and its entirety, and I have the hard cover where I make notes. I have bought two books on the works of Joan Mitchell, two on the works of Helen Frankenthaler, one on Ellen de Kooning, and one on Lee Krasner. I just cannot get enough of learning about these women and how they forged a way for me – I am an artist. Until this book elucidated my thinking, I did not realize how difficult it was for women to enter the art field, even not even not very long ago. Thank you Mary Gabriel.

A treasure.

A thorough history of the Women artist that changed the world. A complete picture of what art once meant and what it should again take up.

amazing book, not great narration

the narrator wasnt great unfortunately but the book is lovely. some audiobooks are tough to listen to....

Art 🖼️ struggle and life

This is an in depth portrait of the beauty and difficulty of the abstract expressionist scene in the 1950s. From pollock and krasner , de Kooning , Joan Mitchell and frankenthaler we take a look into the struggles and victories of these artists and marriages. They often suffered for their art both in fame and fortune and the build up to success. 🪻

loved learning, recording jumps abruptly

I loved learning though this book. The one issue I had is many times in the back half of the book, the recording would either pause and start in another place or at times be clearly disconnected from the previous words. Hoping I didn't miss content, though seems likely.