I'd never heard of Helen Frankenthaler prior to seeing Fierce Poise offered on NetGally. I'm not as knowledgeable about art as I would like to be, and Helen's story sounded interesting, and the cover is just beautiful, so I requested it. Why not? I was so excited to dig in--and then I started reading the introduction.

The author has a bizarre and off-putting tone to his writing here, one that manages to be both obsequious and overly familiar. Nemerov talks about his lifelong love to Frankenthaler and her work, saying he feels a special connection with her because they both lived in a similar area for periods of their life, and his father was her English teacher for one year of school and attended a party with Frankenthaler's first serious romantic partner within a few days of the author's birth. It's a bizarre and kind of creepy stretch. But for all that he claims to have felt this awareness of her since before he could speak, and has wanted to write a book about her and her art for twenty years, he admits that he never tried to meet her or interview her, not even during the ten years when his teaching job was only 45 minutes from her home at the time, prior to her death. Instead, he just presumes to be intimately familiar with her and her art, referring to her throughout the book as Helen, as a "token of the proximity I feel," explaining this familiarity at length in the introduction. The writing felt like something an unbalanced fan, or certainly at least an entitled rich white cisgender man, would write, and it put me off this book entirely.

So thank you to #NetGalley and Penguin for granting me an #advancedcopy of #FiercePoiseHelenFrankenthalerand1950sNewYork, but I will not be finishing this book.

A well-written and engaging account of an early yet formative period of the artist's life, Much of her artwork was well described, though I wish there'd been some illustrations of those pieces to bring them alive.

I loved this book. Having never heard of Helen Frankenthaler previous to reading this book, but familiar with her iconic work, I loved learning about this part of her life. I wanted more as I really love sinking my teeth into an artist’s life and learning more about how they landed where they landed. I loved the famous, recognizable people in the book and immediately looked up this artist and read more. Wonderful. Highly recommend.

I knew very little about Helen Frankenthaler so I was curious about this book. While the book is well written and expertly researched, the author can not overcome the fact that Frankenthaler was not among the most interesting artists of her generation. Born to a wealthy and well-connected family, she never had to struggle to survive the way many other artists did.

Alexander Nemerov does an admirable job of covering Frankenthaler's life and New York in the 1950s. He also details the art world and high society. Overall, this was a good read.

An exceptional snapshot of the life and work of the incomparable Helen Frankenthaler.

I call this a snapshot because it isn’t really a biography, focusing mostly on a single decade and touching briefly on the details of the artist’s life before and after that time.

This sort of close examination is long overdue for Frankenthaler, whose work fell out of favor 40 years ago for being either too girly or not girly enough, depending who was doing the critiquing. She remains one of the least revered of the AbEx movement, always taking a backseat to the likes of Rothko, Newman, Pollock, and her own husband Robert Motherwell.

Frankenthaler has been both an art world darling and dismissed as derivative and dull, depending on what that particular era’s criticism wants us to feel about art. And female artists. Frankenthaler suffered more of this than most AbEx painters, mostly because she was a woman, but even more so because she was a woman who didn’t fit into the two boxes to which critics assigned female artists: Ingenue or consummate rebel.

The confident, assertive, and measured Frankenthaler was neither of those things, and her art thusly doesn’t fit the formula. The fact that she was wealthy and attractive made her a magnet for further dismissive criticism perpetuated by the ridiculous myth that one has to suffer to produce good art. And as we learn in reading Fierce Poise, Frankenthaler faced plenty of adversity and heartbreak in her life. But like many strong women, she is depicted as petty and cold for handling it stoically.

Her work is a good lesson in the concept that art doesn’t have to mean something or send a message to be good, and Nemerov did a solid job of stressing this point. I also applaud the author’s restraint in keeping this relatively short, as is almost always a plus in an artist bio.

Helen Frankenthaler was an artist that I admired greatly, after reading about her and the other women of the Abstract Expressionist Movement in Ninth Street Women, by Mary Gabriel. When I heard that a new biography was coming on that focused on Helen, I was quite excited.

The structure of this book really narrows the focus on Frankenthaler. It was the time in which she was most productive. I can't say that it really worked for me because I like the hills and valleys of a full career. So that could be that my preference stood a bit in the way of enjoying it entirely.

While I liked that he was able to show Frankenthaler as an ambitious woman, focused on her career as an artist, I did feel that there was a cattiness in tone related to the other women in the art scene at the time. Of course, everyone didn't always get along, but I can't help but marvel at how completely opposite that portrayal was to that of Mary Gabriel when she was looking at the whole scene of women at the time.

I am glad I read it, despite the flaws I felt as I read it.

I would like to thank the publisher for a digital arc in exchange for an honest review.

Alexander Nemerov only covers the first part of Helen Frankenthaler’s life and career in his book, but these were formative years in the development of her art and important and often tumultuous ones in her personal life. Frankenthaler didn’t die until 2011 at the age of 83 so there is much more to be discovered, but certainly as an introduction to the artist and her work this book does a fine job. Nemerov’s passion for his subject comes over loud and clear, although to his credit he doesn’t let his obvious admiration prevent him from chronicling her character flaws. His descriptions of her paintings are illuminating and insightful – and for me very helpful. Although sometimes verging on a hagiography rather than a straight biography, I found the book an accessible and compelling read – although I have to admit that even with Nemerov’s excellent analysis of the work the paintings still leave me bemused and unconvinced of their merit.

Who was Helen Frankenthaler?

Alexander Nemerov begins his book Fierce Poise, explaining that for many years, he (and his colleagues), were critical, as well as sceptical of the accolades Helen Frankenthaler, the modern abstract painter and creator of the soak and stain method of painting, received. It was only many years later, Nemerov says, that he came to appreciate her work for its magical properties, as he describes so beautifully, she was able to capture the joy of a moment and transfer it to the canvas so that it comes alive.

Nemerov describes Frankenthaler's early years. Unlike most artists, Helen was born into a wealthy Jewish family in NYC. Money was never an issue for her. The youngest of three sisters, she was the apple of her father's eye. She never ceased to amaze him, and he was certain she would achieve greatness. Her mother, on the other hand, craved attention, and always overshadowed Helen (personality clash). Helen's College years were spent away from the city with like minded women at Bennington College, in Vermont, where she received her art instruction from Paul Feeley. After college, and a visit to Europe, Helen returned to NYC to start her career. At her first (non solo) exhibit, she meets the famous art critic, Clem Greenberg, more then 10 years her senior. He immediately recognizes Helen's potential. He takes her under his wing, and in 1950-51, together with Clem, Helen enters the world of modern abstract painting. It was Clem who took Helen to Jackson Pollok's studio, where she has a revelation that leads her to create her soak stain method of painting.

Fierce Poise focuses on Helen Frankenthaler in her first decade, (1950-1960), as a modern abstract artist, from Mountain and Sea in 1952, to, Before the Caves in 1958. But, Helen Frankenthaler continued to paint (as well as create art in many other mediums), her entire life.

I love this book as a solid introduction to a major contributor, to the field of modern art. Nemerov does a wonderful job bringing Helen to life in the pages of his book, so much so, I'd go to an exhibit of her work tomorrow, if I could (pandemic makes this an impossibilty). For now then, thanks to this book and the internet, I've garnered an appreciation and respect for Helen Frankenthaler VIRTUALLY.

Thank you #netgalley and @penguinpress for my complimentary copy of #fiercepoisehelenfrankenthalerand1950snewyork in return for my honest review. #5stars

This was an excellent look at the artist Helen Frankenthaler. Nemerov does her justice by using vivid descriptions to talk about her life and what made her one of the century's best artists. Nemerov takes a real personal approach to this book by referring to the artist as Helen even though he never actually met her. And at the end of this book I felt so close to her that I was referring to her as Helen.