Page 24 - Studio International - July August 1974

Helen Frankenthaler
Hybrid Vigor 1973
Acrylic on canvas, 103 x 172½ in.
Photo: Ann Freedman
Andre Emmerich, New York

Frankenthaler's early works into the art of contrives an illusion of depth that somehow any function save that of colour and surface
colour painting. extrudes all suggestions of depth back to the stability, working in abstraction like the
Of the artists within the modernist tradition picture's surface; it is as if that surface, in all contouring drawing surrounding Cezanne's
of the 196os, Hofmann and Still were the two its literalness, were enlarged to contain a world pats of paint.15 Colour still functions at least
whose touch remained most painterly but, of colour and light differentiations impossible partially in an illusionistic fashion (here even
unlike Hofmann, Still had produced an art of to flatness but which yet manage not to violate more like Louis's Veils), while painterly surface
colour without using the cubist layout. Still's flatness.'14 serves — like the weave of the canvas showing
sense of scale and open areas continued to be as In these paintings, Olitski, while bringing through stain before — as an indication of
strong in the 196os as it was before. If anything, forth full-bodied colour, still achieves the all- picture making. It should be noted that these
it widened as colour became more disengaged over quality of the classic Pollocks and the works, while launching a different direction for
from a need to mark off zones or areas. Still's slight illusionistic surface of Louis's Veils. modernist art (see above), grow directly from
irregularly-shaped passages and uncubist That Olitski borrowed from Pollock's painterly roots of achievement in 196os linear painting.
composition had great influence on Dzubas at style for this achievement points up the Robert Motherwell (b. 1915), whose
the beginning of the decade and on Olitski at difficulty in the relationship of painterly and paintings from the 195os and early 196os had
the end (and on Poons, Dan Christensen, non-painterly in these pictures; for the grainy retained gestural shapes against a white
Bannard and Peter Bradley in the early 197os). surface achieved by spray has the flat 'even- background, turned, in 1967 in the Open
Both Still and Hofmann stood as continual over' surface quality of earlier stain linear series, to crisp drawing set against a solid field.
marks of what power a painterly and complex shapes. It offers illusionistic changes usually His earlier works had often suffered from the
style could continue to bring to colour identified with a painterly touch, but here they attempt to fuse drawing and shape: the drawn
painting. work optically so as not to undermine the rectangle in the Open series allowed Motherwell
Jules Olitski's move to the spray-painting flatness. The drawing in the works at the to fuse his strongest gifts of placement and
technique in 1965 resulted from his interest in edges (which serves to contain the picture's drawing in an identical function. This interior
advancing pure colour even further. Olitski's surface) is modelled heavily, however, and drawing serves a dual function: it calls
sprayed surfaces create major shifts in hue loosely painted. attention by echo to the exterior limits of the
from area to area without encountering the By 1969, Olitski had shifted his art again, picture itself, and serves as a surface
part-to-part relationships seen before in colour moving the burden of maintaining support modulator of linear character. It allows the
painting. An illusionism is produced, but of a shape from the edge to a thick, modelled surface. `breathing room' of a slight illusionism in the
different kind. As Greenberg has observed : Here the painterly touch is rendered consistent midst of a strong flat field, while its parallels
`Olitski's grainy surface, together with colour throughout the work, yet is disengaged from to the framing edge maintain that illusion as a
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