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Helen FrankenThaler



Astride her paintings in the background, walking, head down intent upon THOUGHT itself, she walks past several canvases:  A woman with a mission:  art'abstract
Helen Frankenthaler, born Dec 12, 1928, New York
(In her studio in 1964, photo by Alexander Liberman)




I think that you can learn more about composition
by studying her works than an entire course on
the subject.  I was doing some "washes" and when
Don looked at them, he said, "A Helen Frankenthaler".
What a neat day that was to discover such a 
breath-taking "new" painter (new to me anyway ;)

Here are a few of her works that are superbly brilliant.

All images and program notes from the fab book:

 "Helen Frankenthaler:  A Paintings retrospective"
 Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers, New York,
 in association with the 
 Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth Tado Ando's design

 by E.A. Carmean, Jr.  1989

 ISBN ???

 Library of Congress # ND237.F765A4
 Dewey Decimal # 759.13-dc19



Las Mayas



beautifully simple styles (reminding one of Joan Mirro), dark brown brookingly overhead, leads the eye down the right side of the tall, thin 4:1 canvas, again picking up the brown at the bottom.  In the middle red, blue, and dark green (almost primary colors) seem inter-linked to the tall verticalness of the canvas.  Speckles here and there in a Kandinski-esque parade of simple forms splattered (seemingly) at random.  Ah the beauty born that day in New York!
"Las Mayas", 1958
254 x 110 cm, Oil on Canvas



Form follows function (or is the other way around?)
Ducks follow crackers.


airily lit two young girls sit side by side, heads nodded towards each other, resplendent in gossimer-white, gold-adorned dresses. Behind, them in dark browns, barely visible on either side of them, servants? stand, heads bowed intently towards the young maidens
Francisco Jose de Goya y Lucientes
"Majas on a Balcony, c. 1800-14, 
Oil on canvas 195 x 126 cm




After inverting Ms. F's painting, and side-by-side, the composition is luminescently clear, her work is a direct quote of Goya's -- yet the dark background had been turned luminescently white (can I use the word luminescent twice in the same sentence?), alas my gout attacks again!
(ref pix)


This technique (of turning the picture upside down)
is often used by artists when trying to be 
non-judgemental about a reference work.  The idea
is outlined in several books (I can't imagine which)
one is "Drawing on the Artist within" and "Drawing
on the right side of the brain" (although it might
be called, "Drawing on the left side of the brain"
-- with my brain, there's no telling.

Hmmm, I wonder why there's not a book called:
"Drawing on the North-West corner of the brain,
or the "South-east corner", etc ;)

Program notes:  Walking through an exhibition at the 
                Walker Art Center in Minneapolis with
H. Harvard Arnason in 1961, the British art historian
Sir Herbert Read was confronted with the picture 
"Las Mayas".  As reported, Read remarked, "This is
unquestionably a lovely painting.  The saturated blotter
effect of the thin paint on the un-primed canvas is 
very compellling.  Yet, I am some-what un-easy about
it.  The accidental element seems to be carried too far".

How ironic is Read's comment on Las Mayas's accidental
element.  ... In fact, whole sections of the painting's
structure are based directly on Goya's Mayas on a Balcony
as can be seen above.



For E.M.


In one sense, the computer makes this sort of thing
"trivial".  We all know that the "pallet" of colors
that is used to optimise the storage of an image
can be minimised.  So, when we look at this work,
we see this idea at work.

Dark at the top and bottom, luminescently lighter in the middle), but still a darker, more somber mood than other things.  Suggesting an in-door scene.  Ah, if only Turner could do a 'quote' of her works, what would our world be like!
"For E.M." 1981
180 x 292 cm, acrylic on canvas


sez Ms. F.  "Many artists make copies or variations
of works by past masters.  For me, it's usually
the work of artists I admire and understand.  
However, this Manet painting of a carp from
Chicago challenged me to find out *why* this is
such a good picture.  So I decided to pain-stakingly
copy areas and colors, but there's no fish in my
painting.  The scale is the same [73 x 92 cm, oil on 
canvas; her's is 180 x 292 cm, acrylic on canvas; Pizo]
but the size is very different.  At times I couldn't
resist ignoring the Manet to meet the needs of my 
own abstract canvas.  Still, side by side the 
similarities should be obvious".

Plebian, ordinary and a bit drab (as are all still lifes in essence) a carp (tongue hanging out?) tail sticking up at right angles, just the way that zebras don't in persistence of memory. beside the carp, mussels, clams - see food. sea food? A copper pot and lemon complete the circle.

Edouard Manet's "Still LIfe With Carp" (1864)
(now in the collection of The Art Institute
of Chicago (artic) -- they get all the best
bits, all I ever get is the tail.

Program notes:  Manet's "Still Life With Carp" is centered
                on a large carp placed upon a diagonal
white table-cloth.  Behind the fish, to the right is a
dark copper pot, while to its left is a group of oysters
and a small red gurnard.  A lemon joined with a dark knife
sits at the right edge of the composition, while both
horizontal background and the triangularly shaped 
forground are rendered in empty dark brown.


And the work of an erh, ahm, uhh certain pretendeur d'art....


A mellaje of colors that supports the notion that the 'artist' has nor further mastered color any more than he has spelling ;)
"Carp", R. Traynham, 2003
acylic on C.P. W/C paper





Grey Fireworks


This is a particular favorite of mine (can you
tell why young paduin learner?)


a light, smokey grey fog encompasses the canvas from border to borer and border to border, a celebration of light in splotches of color here and there:  Fireworks sound like these look:  That is the nature of the abstract.
Grey Fireworks, 1982
183 x 301 cm, acrylic on canvas





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