The Beauty Behind Helen Frankenthaler’s Art

To represent the cross-pollination of inspiration in her life, included in the exhibit are works by Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland, Jackson Pollack, Mark Rothko, her once-husband Robert Motherwell, and life-long friends: Anne Truitt, Anthony Caro, and David Smith. To see these works together gives fresh insight into how her friends and contemporaries supported and influenced one another. 

Frankenthaler kept up an active correspondence with friends throughout her life. She wrote that David Smith’s sculptures were “drawing in space” and that their connection was of “another frequency.” Of Anne Truitt, she wrote, “I realize how much we always ‘need’ and count on each other.” There’s a romanticized myth that artists suffer alone, but no artist creates in a vacuum. With Frankenthaler, she was social, gave famous parties, and most importantly, treasured her friends. To have an exhibit that recognizes this is crucial.

Frankenthaler is a painter’s painter– gestural, using her whole body to pour paint, swing brushes, and smooth with sponges. The poet, Frank O’Hara, said of her, “She is an artist in the act of receiving lyrical insight.” Her work is often described as poetic. She worked on large unprimed canvases on the floor, creating luscious pools of color that dance and meld. She made massive acrylic abstracts, some 10 feet wide and almost 8 feet tall. She took risks continually throughout her 50 years of making art. She was a force of experimentation.

Her work is about immersion. The more one allows themself to merge into it, a lucky occurrence can happen– one can become washed in cerulean blue looking at Ocean Drive West #1 (1974); in the gradations of yellow in Mornings (1971); or the greys and reds of Chiaroscuro (1979) and Janus (1990). Frankenthaler was a master colorist, as if the color was divined, culled from elsewhere. These are not so much washes as they are saturations that have no edge; they keep on flowing, female and feline. She’s a tough cookie, not to be imitated. And, yes, these are beautiful paintings.

Her sculptures are as well, though altogether different. Matisse Table (1972) is solid, strong, upright, hard bronze, and yet, still fluid. Frankenthaler demonstrates her knowledge of the power of negative space, like in her paintings. She allows for emptiness, not filling up space, but letting it breathe. The lines in her sculptures are cleanly straight or curved, clear. The sculptures are confident, yet simple, gestures that become statements. Her friend, sculptor Andrew Caro, said her sculpture had “a breathtaking freshness” and that “she trusted her intuition.” She lived solidly inside her work, inside herself.

Heart of London Map (1972) is enigmatic and delightful. What it is, is anyone’s take. There is a sense of lift, as if it were meant to turn. Wings? Antennae? A hotel bell? The interwoven cylinders for a base? There’s movement in its bronze solidity. Yard (1972) looks Roman with its burnished finish, like some kind of helmet worn by the towering Achilles in battle. Even her painting titles are wonderful– Cassis, Southern Exposure, Maelstrom, Borrowed Dreams, The Rake’s Progress– showing her love of literature and poetry.

Frankenthaler’s work is most certainly beautiful– that ever so difficult, tangled word. She said in 1993, “Today, there’s a fashion in the art world where the word ‘beauty’ is ostracized as being obsolete, meaningless, and that other considerations in art are far more important. Beauty is a very tricky word, and the way I use it means an order and a sense of rightness that moves you and that usually has to do with scale, and the light, and the tradition, and everything else that goes into a painting.”

We all need more beauty in the world.