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Born: 1928
Died: 2011
Summary of Helen Frankenthaler
Helen Frankenthaler was a pivotal figure in American art during the mid-twentieth century. Frankenthaler was influenced by Abstract Expressionist painting methods, but developed her own personal approach to the style after meeting important artists such as Jackson Pollock and Franz Kline (and Robert Motherwell, whom she subsequently married) early in her career. She created the “soak-stain” method, in which she dripped turpentine-thinned paint over canvas, resulting in brilliant colour washes that looked to blend with the canvas and obliterated all traces of three-dimensional illusionism.
Color Field Painting, characterised by airy compositions that highlighted the pleasures of pure colour and brought a totally new appearance and feel to the surface of the canvas, was hailed as the “next big thing” in American painting by prominent art critic Clement Greenberg. Later in her career, Frankenthaler moved on to other artistic mediums, most notably woodcuts, in which she attained the quality of painting, sometimes even reproducing the results of her soak-stain method.
Frankenthaler developed her own version of Jackson Pollock’s pouring method while working on Mountains and Sea (1952), in which she poured paints onto large canvases on the floor. Unlike Pollock, who employed enamel paints that dried on the surface of the canvas, Frankenthaler poured oil paints diluted with turpentine that seeped into the fabric of the canvas. The soak-stain technique used by Frankenthaler resulted in luminous, misty compositions dominated by vast swaths of colour that appeared to have grown freely and organically onto the canvas.
Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland were influenced by Frankenthaler’s work, which saw works like Mountains and Sea as a form of abstract painting that progressed beyond Pollock’s textural, psychologically charged canvases to compositions almost completely centred on colour. Color Field Painting was developed by Frankenthaler, Louis, and Noland based on the soak-stain method and the colour wash. In these paintings, the entire picture area is envisioned as a “field” that appears to extend beyond the canvas’s boundaries; figure and ground have become one and the same, and three-dimensional illusionism has been entirely abandoned.
Frankenthaler was an abstract artist who focused on the natural environment rather than the existential confrontation with the canvas or the search for the sublime, which was a dramatic break from first-generation Abstract Expressionism. Her pared-down forms were frequently influenced by her perceptions of nature, whether it was the dry landscape of the American Southwest, a mulberry tree in upstate New York, or the Long Island Sound, as seen from the artist’s Darien, Connecticut home.
Since the 1960s, Frankenthaler has extended her groundbreaking soak-stain method to various artistic media, most notably watered-down acrylic, which she began using in place of turpentine-thinned paint. She next tried to recreate the method’s effects in printing, producing woodcuts that not only looked like paintings but also had the hazy, watercolour-like appearance of her colour washes.
Childhood
Helen Frankenthaler grew up with her two elder sisters in an affluent Manhattan family. From a young age, her parents noticed and nurtured her artistic potential, sending her to modern, experimental schools. During the summer, the Frankenthaler family took several travels, and it was on these journeys that Frankenthaler acquired her love of the countryside, sea, and sky. Her father was a judge on the New York State Supreme Court when she was eleven years old, and he died of cancer. Helen went through a four-year period of sadness as a result of the loss, during which she suffered from severe headaches.
Early Life
Frankenthaler was transferred to the Dalton School in New York at the age of fifteen, where he studied under Mexican painter Rufino Tamayo. She chose to become an artist when she was sixteen and enrolled at Bennington College in Vermont, where she studied under Paul Feeley, who was instrumental in organising Abstract Expressionist exhibits.
Mid Life
Frankenthaler returned to New York in 1948. At an exhibition she arranged for Bennington alumnae two years later, she met famous art critic Clement Greenberg (19 years her senior). Greenberg exposed her to numerous major Abstract Expressionist painters, including Willem de Kooning, Lee Krasner, Jackson Pollock, and Franz Kline, during their love connection, which lasted several years. Frankenthaler was also inspired by Greenberg to study with Hans Hofmann in 1950.
After coming home from a vacation to Nova Scotia in 1952, Frankenthaler produced Mountains and Sea, a revolutionary painting in which she pioneered her “soak-stain” method. Frankenthaler diluted her oil paints with turpentine and manipulated the resultant pools of colour with window wipers, sponges, and charcoal outlines while working on a huge canvas on the floor.
Greenberg sent artists Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland to Frankenthaler’s studio the next year to view Mountains and Sea; their enthusiasm for the work led to their experimenting with Frankenthaler’s soak-stain method and the creation of Color Field Painting with Frankenthaler. Frankenthaler’s work, Louis would later say, was the “bridge from Pollock to what was possible” Given that Frankenthaler was just 24 years old at the time, Pollock and de Kooning were in their 40s and 50s, and battled for many years before obtaining recognition, the feat is even more remarkable.
Frankenthaler continued to use the new approach she had devised in the years that followed, finding inspiration from her lifelong love of nature. She met fellow artist Robert Motherwell, another renowned Abstract Expressionist painter, in 1957, and the two married the following year, marking the start of a thirteen-year era of mutual influence in their work. Because Motherwell and Frankenthaler were both born into wealth, they sparked envy among other, cash-strapped Abstract Expressionists, earning them the moniker “the golden couple.”
Frankenthaler began using acrylic paint instead of oil paint in the 1960s. In acrylic paintings like Canyon (1965), she produced huge splashes of vivid colour, demonstrating the potential of this new medium. Her art was featured in a Clement Greenberg-curated exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1964. Greenberg dubbed the show Post-Painterly Abstraction – his chosen moniker for the type of painting established by Frankenthaler, Louis, and Noland, which is more commonly known to as Color Field Painting – to identify this new strain of painting that evolved from Abstract Expressionism.
Frankenthaler began to exhibit her work worldwide in 1966, at the Venice Biennale, and in 1967, at the International and Universal Exposition in Montreal, at the United States Pavilion. She began to experiment with other artistic mediums at the same time, particularly printing, producing woodcuts, aquatints, and lithographs that equaled her paintings in their originality and beauty. Frankenthaler went to the American Southwest after her divorce from Motherwell in 1971. Desert Pass (1976) and numerous more works depicting the hues and tones of the Southwestern region were the product of two journeys she took in the mid-1970s.
Late Life
During the 1980s and 1990s, Frankenthaler continued to create work till the end of her life. She worked in a range of mediums, including clay and steel sculpture, and even designed the sets and costumes for England’s Royal Ballet, in addition to painting and printmaking. Frankenthaler died in 2011 at her home in Darien, Connecticut, many years after being honoured with the exhibition Frankenthaler at Eighty: Six Decades at the prestigious gallery Knoedler & Company in New York.
The Color Field movement was founded by Frankenthaler’s soak-stain method, which had a significant influence on the work of other Color Field painters such as Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland, and Jules Olitski. Color Field painting, with its sparse, contemplative character, is generally considered as an essential forerunner of 1960s Minimalism, in addition to its dramatic break from first-generation Abstract Expressionism.
Famous Art by Helen Frankenthaler
Mountains and Sea
1952
This canvas is the artist’s signature work, and it’s where she first introduced her soak-stain technique. It is a piece of calm intimacy, despite its vast scale (7 x 10 feet). Mountains and Sea was painted after the artist returned from Nova Scotia, and it captures her views of the region’s landscapes, which she memorably characterised as “were in my arms as I did it … I was trying to get at something – I didn’t know what until it was manifest.” Color plays a new, more prominent role in this painting, with splashes of pink, blue, and green outlining the hills, rocks, and water, whose shapes are sketchily drawn in charcoal.
Desert Pass
1976
Desert Pass is a great example of Frankenthaler’s response to the natural terrain, with its barely defined shapes and earthy colour. The artwork, which was inspired by a trip to the American Southwest, depicts the region’s colours, shapes, and temperature. Yellow-gold, which evokes sand as well as the desert’s aridity and bright light, and greenish-blue, which resembles the shape and colour of cactus, are two of them.
Madame Butterfly
2000
Despite the fact that the centre white form resembles a butterfly, this print evokes rather than portrays its subject, with a delicacy fitting for Puccini’s sad opera of the same name. Madame Butterfly, Frankenthaler’s final collaboration with Tyler Graphics, is an extraordinarily intricate piece with 106 colours, 46 woodblocks, and a 6′ length. The print’s topic as well as the way it was made, employing traditional Japanese Ukiyo-e carving techniques, demonstrate the artist’s longstanding interest in Asian art and culture.
BULLET POINTED (SUMMARISED)
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- Helen Frankenthaler was a pivotal figure in American art during the mid-twentieth century.
- Frankenthaler was influenced by Abstract Expressionist painting methods, but developed her own personal approach to the style after meeting important artists such as Jackson Pollock and Franz Kline (and Robert Motherwell, whom she subsequently married) early in her career.
- She created the “soak-stain” method, in which she dripped turpentine-thinned paint over canvas, resulting in brilliant colour washes that looked to blend with the canvas and obliterated all traces of three-dimensional illusionism.
- Color Field Painting, characterised by airy compositions that highlighted the pleasures of pure colour and brought a totally new appearance and feel to the surface of the canvas, was hailed as the “next big thing” in American painting by prominent art critic Clement Greenberg.
- Later in her career, Frankenthaler moved on to other artistic mediums, most notably woodcuts, in which she attained the quality of painting, sometimes even reproducing the results of her soak-stain method.
- Frankenthaler developed her own version of Jackson Pollock’s pouring method while working on Mountains and Sea (1952), in which she poured paints onto large canvases on the floor.
- Unlike Pollock, who employed enamel paints that dried on the surface of the canvas, Frankenthaler poured oil paints diluted with turpentine that seeped into the fabric of the canvas.
- In these paintings, the entire picture area is envisioned as a “field” that appears to extend beyond the canvas’s boundaries; figure and ground have become one and the same, and three-dimensional illusionism has been entirely abandoned.
- Since the 1960s, Frankenthaler has extended her groundbreaking soak-stain method to various artistic media, most notably watered-down acrylic, which she began using in place of turpentine-thinned paint.
- She next tried to recreate the method’s effects in printing, producing woodcuts that not only looked like paintings but also had the hazy, watercolour-like appearance of her colour washes.
Information Citations
En.wikipedia.org, https://en.wikipedia.org/.
