Helen Frankenthaler

"Wrong thing that make it right", in Helen's own words. These contradictions simply help explain the fact that Frankenthaler's work is full of paradoxes--which in my mind, also explains abstract art perfectly. Each of her pieces of work seem to be unique but there is also a coherence and there is a reoccurrence with characteristics configurations. Although all of her work wasn't consumed in abstract work, it did compose a great deal of it.

Frankenthaler started off her career studying a mexican painter, Rufino Tamayo. Tamayo taught her privately for months at the Dalton School in New York. She became intrigued with his teaching and began to impress herself when she could reproduce his Picasso-inpsired manner (Picasso--another abstract artist!). Later, at Bennington College, she then began to follow Paul Feeley, an abstract painter. Feeley's main emphasis was on Cubism, which later reflected in Frankenthaler's still-lifes in which she produced in her Bennington painting classes.

After studying different artists and exploring different dimensions of art, Frankenthaler found her self "agonizing over relationships of plane to plane". In Frankenthaler's work, everything had to be reduced to schematic rectangles and each geometric plane had to take its place as part of a flat pattern in the two-dimensional scheme of the picture, but at the same time, it had to fluctuate in a acceptable relation to its neighboring planes. I think this doesn't only explain Frankenthaler's art well, but abstract art in general.

Some of Frankenthaler most famous abstract pieces include: Mountains and Sea, Other Generations, May 26th Backwards, The Highway, and Jacob's Ladder. 

Mountains and Sea

Other Generations

May 26th Backwards

The Highway

Jacob's Ladder

Overall, Frankenthaler's work overloads the senses and engulfs you into the painting. Not only does the structure help attract the voyeurist but her color use completely expands the imagination.  I like art that makes you think and experience and I feel that Frankenthaler's work does a great job of this.


References:
Wilkin, K. (1984). Frankenthaler: Works on Paper 1949-1984. New York, New York: George Braziller, Inc. and the International Exhibitions Foundation.

Fine, R. (1993). Helen Frankenthaler: prints. Washington : National Gallery of Art.