Helen Frankenthaler: Painting History, Writing Painting

This ground-breaking and extraordinary examination of the work of colour field painter Helen Frankenthaler overturns familiar assumptions about the artist which focus on her reputation as ‘the bridge between Pollock and what was possible’. Trained as a painter, Alison Rowley brings a keen eye to Frankenthaler’s paintings, highlighting the artist’s debt not only to Jackson Pollock but also to Cezanne, and speculating for the first time as to Frankenthaler’s 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 infamous novel To the Lighthouse, this beautifully written book provides crucial, and still highly relevant, insights into Frankenthaler’s practice.