2
" Said Simone de Beauvoir in her groundbreaking book The Second Sex,
"Just as in America there is no Negro problem but rather a white problem; just as 'anti-Semitism is not a Jewish problem; it is our problem'; so the women problem has always been a man's problem. . . . Men have always held the lot of women in their hands; and they have determined what it should be, not according to her interest, but rather with regard to their own projects, their fears, and their needs. "
― Mary Gabriel , Ninth Street Women: Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, and Helen Frankenthaler: Five Painters and the Movement That Changed Modern Art
3
" After Kristallnacht, tight U.S. immigration laws were relaxed somewhat, allowing a trickle of people who wanted to leave Europe to enter the United States. Many of those given priority in a first wave of immigration were artists, writers, composers, and scientists, but even that very circumscribed immigration caused alarm. As late as 1939, 95 percent of Americans did not want any part of a European war.15 And, with the country’s economy still fragile, many people resented those fleeing it as needy hordes who would compete for scarce jobs and dwindling government support. Anti-immigration forces in Congress used fear as an excuse to deny foreigners entry. The House Committee on Un-American Activities was established in 1938 to investigate newcomers suspected of being communists or spies.16 Alarm and insecurity in some soon hardened into paranoia and hatred. In February 1939, twenty-two thousand people marched through Manhattan, giving fascist salutes and carrying U.S. flags as well as banners with swastikas, toward a pro-Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden. "
― Mary Gabriel , Ninth Street Women: Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, and Helen Frankenthaler: Five Painters and the Movement That Changed Modern Art
5
" Elaine (de Kooning) wrote,
"For the bureaucrat, reality is found in . . .the radio with the advertisements that make claims that he accepts a s false. Reality is the baseball game, Hollywood, Washington, D.C. Reality is conspicuous consumption. All of this in short, is the reality that someone else has made for him.
This to the artist is unreality . . . "
― Mary Gabriel , Ninth Street Women: Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, and Helen Frankenthaler: Five Painters and the Movement That Changed Modern Art
6
" John Myers wrote,
"It is Imagination, man's power to imagine, that makes living in society, any society, possible. It think what Paul Goodman says about doing away with 'intolerable biological deprivation and spiritual impoverishment' through what he calls 'creative cooperative production' is the right and humane solution to our social woes. "
― Mary Gabriel , Ninth Street Women: Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, and Helen Frankenthaler: Five Painters and the Movement That Changed Modern Art
8
" The abstract artist, he said, would be repeatedly challenged by such skeptics asking, “‘What does it mean?’… ‘Is it a sky, a house, a horse?’” To which they should respond with confidence and honesty, “‘No, it is a painting.’”29 "
― Mary Gabriel , Ninth Street Women: Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, and Helen Frankenthaler: Five Painters and the Movement That Changed Modern Art
9
" Simply to live does not justify existence, for life is a mere gesture on the surface of the earth, and death a return to that from which we had never been wholly separated; but oh to leave a trace, no matter how faint, of that brief gesture! For someone, some day, may find it beautiful! —Frank O’Hara1 "
― Mary Gabriel , Ninth Street Women: Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, and Helen Frankenthaler: Five Painters and the Movement That Changed Modern Art