Page 25 - Studio International - August 1965

Helen Frankenthaler

symmetry. posing the question of what a painting is in a
variety of ways. In certain paintings evanescent, quasi­
symmetrical images of organic fantasy appeared.
Suggestions of flora. fauna, pale moons. natural
formations are posed dialectically. in rhyming sequence
of substance and shadow. Shapes live without linear
definition. spreading or suspended in filmy, irreal space
occasionally emphasised with a narrow border plane.
The symmetry or centrality of her paintings since 1961
alter earlier premises. Forms no longer spread up and
out but contain themselves calmly, their edges often
touching. relationships to the boundaries specified.
What is a painting if a sequence of borders and frames
is introduced? What kind of space is the space that
echoes beyond a plane of colour clearly defined by a
rectangle? How shall an inset of white surmounted by
a high orange and vignetted as though on a page. be
read? These are the problems articulated in Franken­
thaler's recent paintings.
Clearly the edge assumes major importance. In shifting
the emphasis in her process, she changes. Colour itself.
without qualifying graphic notation, is now the main
emotional vehicle. It wells up in splendid clouds. or it
sits firmly in flat areas. It lives by the confinement of
the final edge. Illusion now resides in the way adjacent
colours are read.
The sensation of dilating space is even more pro­
nounced in Magic Carpet. Here again the sides of the
stretcher animate the dominant form. a yellow-to­
ochre expanse of the warmest light imaginable. The
mildly serrated edge of this billowing yellow meets a
deep blue which lies calm beneath it, as though it were
sky or sea. The blue serves. in a way. like a con­
ventional repoussoir except that it lifts the yellow field
upward. instead of thrusting it inward. What happens
in both these paintings is a new reading of colour and
space-horizontally infinite. vertically contained.
Because this flooding inward-from the definite edge
to the ambiguous interior-demands more stable forms.
Frankenthaler tends to cover her canvas in recent
work. A superb example is Provincetown in which the
white-usually a metaphor for space and air-is
replaced by a warm grey field, a defined atmosphere
within which a series of roughly rectangular shapes
suspend themselves one from the other with the heavy
formative movement of a waterdrop sliding on glass.
The suspense produced in these pending shapes is
doubled by the equivocal nature of the image. Here is an
Magic Carper 1 964 assumed great importance in her work. The idea is image which inevitably calls to mind the misty atmos­
96 X 98 in. symbolised by the presence of a squared form. The phere of seaside places. Yet, it is also abstraction,
Andre Emmerich Gallery, New York
square, still open. still relatively ambiguous. serves as an clearly designated by means of the irregular black frame
abstract pictorial device. It is a way of relating to the around it and the strips of yellow and green below it.
rectangular limits of the canvas and a reference to Naturalistic associations are subsumed by the strength
another kind of space-circumscribed. equilibriated. of abstract elements.
The square offers the possibility of double spatial In this painting and in most of her recent work. draw­
illusion. Consider. for example. Black with Shadow: ing is no longer linear but is used to determine how one
Here the squared shape. pierced by light and residing coloured shape occludes with another. The improvisa­
in a luminous no-man's-land, establishes itself on the tional flow of line is replaced with an improvisational
foreplane. Hugging its edge is the red that emerges selection of tone and chroma.
from behind. and at its right is the stained. shadowy These recent paintings. while very different from her
ochre shape that occupies an intermediary space. There is early works. are saturated with intimations of style­
a sequence of planes clearly designated in a narrow style as a synopsis of specific spatial experiences. There
space reading back from the picture plane. In their is an identifiable reflex in all of Frankenthaler's paintings.
interrelations they are harmoniously stable. Yet, they whether they are like gigantic watercolour improvisa­
form a configuration which. because of the capital tions. or like finished, contained easel paintings. Her
square form. lives in still another context-the other way of knowing experience communicates itself
Around 1961 Frankenthaler increased her use of fresh. true, and in the best sense lyrical approach. ■
space that the square within a square produces. regardless of the pictorial alterations over the years. It is a

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