Over the course of her career, Helen Frankenthaler (1928-2011) had a dynamic and complicated relationship with art critics. In their interpretations of her nonfigurative paintings, reviewers frequently infused contemporary notions of gender and gendered stereotypes. (1) Such critiques often belittled her creative output, pegging her as a follower and not fully crediting her as the innovator she was. A contemporary reading of her critical reception can contribute to a re-assessment of Helen Frankenthaler in American art history (1956; Fig. 1). Analyzing how gender I was often used to exclude the artist from the core of the avant-garde art world during the course of her career and a close consideration of her reception are essential to a broadened appreciation of this artist. An examination of the mechanics of her relegation will reveal how critics perpetuated such notions throughout her career.

While concerns about gender are ever-present, they fluctuate in the reception of Frankenthaler between overt and indirect manifestations, illuminating the fact that gender is malleable and plays varying roles in the reception of the artist. The definition of gender in this article is subtle, nuanced, and historically shaped, and regardless of how Frankenthaler defined herself--she did not embrace feminism or the women's art movement--conceptions of gender affected interpretations of her creations. Mid-century viewers instilled contemporary notions of gender into the inherent qualities of her nonfigurative output, and subsequent critics and scholars constructed meaning based on past critiques, the conditions of their engagement with the objects, and current approaches to identity. As critics infused gender into their readings of her work, such reception took hold in the art world.

Gender has long been intertwined with art world access. Society's approach to men and women as individuals as well as to their roles within society has been culturally determined and changes from one historical period to another. The characteristics and attributes ascribed to males and females, thereby comprising gender, have altered throughout our history to accommodate the shifting needs of the culture-at-large. (2) Gender is neither fixed nor "natural" or inherent but determined by the repetition of culturally constructed acts, which change throughout history depending on what a particular society in a certain time deems acceptable. (3) Further, gender rarely exists in a vacuum but incorporates the social understanding of other aspects of identity, such as race and class.

The shifting views on gender throughout the twentieth century affected the critical view of Helen Frankenthaler. She was cast as an artistic link, a follower, not central to any art movement, a position which, ironically, enabled her fame, success, and inclusion in "the narrative of modernism." (4) As such, through her development of the soak-stain technique, critics and scholars credited Frankenthaler with initiating an art form, Color-Field painting, later fully realized and honed by male artists. Frankenthaler thereby received recognition--albeit often with somewhat condescending undertones-seldom imparted to female artists of the period. Norma Broude and Mary D. Garrard explain how some female artists in the 1950s were able to attain recognition and praise. They...