As an art historian
who grew up in the age of blossoming feminist art movements, one of my major
disappointments has always been the significant women artists of previous
movements who were not given much exposure when they first came into their own.
Helen Frankenthaler is one of them, because
she was a colleague of major figures of Abstract
Expressionism Jackson Pollock (1912–1956),
Willem de Kooning (1904–1997), and Robert Motherwell (1915–1991). She is
considered part of the “second generation” of Abstract Expressionism. Since the
1960s, of course, she established her own reputation as a pioneer American
modernist, and her work no longer needs to be connected by art historians to
the major figures of Abstract Expressionism, as if that movement was the do-all
end-all moment in American modernism. In 1960 the poet Frank O’Hara organized
the first retrospective of her work at the Jewish Museum in New York. Hence, I
salute her body of work in this tribute to Jewish
American Heritage Month.
Frankenthaler was born and raised in New York. She was a
pupil of Hans Hofmann (1880–1966), a German
Bauhaus artist who immigrated to New York
and opened his own school to teach the principles of abstraction, as well as Bauhaus
ideas of how to integrate fine art into design. Frankenthaler’s earliest work
was influenced by Cubism. When she met
Pollock, her work lost its cubist tendencies and she produced abstractions with
thick paint built up. A trip to Nova Scotia in 1952 helped change her views on
abstraction. She sketched landscapes in watercolor and the wash-like character
of watercolor was translated to oils and acrylics on canvas. She was a pioneer
of the technique of staining unprimed canvas.
Her stained canvas paintings that hinted at landscape
yielded in the 1960s to works that were large, simple fields of color. While
Frankenthaler’s intention may have been to depict a literal subject, her main
concern was form, with spatial dynamics. The simple fields of color evolved
into contrasts of positive and negative space, such as Silent Curtain. In her prints,
Frankenthaler mimics the concerns of Abstract Expressionism with texture, while
exploring the idea of contrasts of emptiness and shape. In a series of prints
on different subjects, Frankenthaler explored mundane activity. This piece by
the artist leads one naturally to assume, values and objects are not of primary
importance. What is important is contrast of positive and negative space. At
this point she experimented with prints to show this contrast, often with the
positive forms surrounding the blank central area. In this work, she presents
the reverse. The forms are reminiscent of her stain paintings, but the subject
matter, while abstract, is more recognizable.
Studio activity:
An abstract everyday form. Use a piece of brown craft paper, as Frankenthaler did,
and white chalk or pastel. Select a simple subject from everyday life and express
it in the simplest way possible that suggests its qualities: a white window
curtain, white sheets on an outside laundry line, a piece of white paper blown
around in the wind, or a white flag waving in the breeze. Give it either
expressive qualities or calm qualities. Either isolate the subject on the paper
or create a rudimentary background using the same medium. Experiment with the
white medium to create highlights that suggest sunlight surrounding the object
you decide to draw.
Correlations to Davis
programs: Explorations in Art Grade 4: 6.35; Explorations in Art Grade 5:
6.31; Explorations in Art Grade 6: 5.25; A Community Connection: 8.2; Exploring
Visual Design: 2, 6, 7; The Visual Experience: 9.4, 16.7; Discovering Art
History: 17.3
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