Helen Frankenthaler: A Grand Sweep

Describing her painting Chairman of the Board (1971), Helen Frankenthaler said that the work “was about a grand sweep. I had the basic idea in my head—I knew how the lines would dance in. I felt sure of myself.” This statement speaks to the artist’s ambition to paint on a monumental scale, and her confidence in doing so, two decades after her breakthrough moment in the Abstract Expressionist scene of midcentury New York. At the same time, the phrase—a grand sweep—also speaks to the expansive arc of her long career and its continuous innovations.

The paintings in this exhibition offer a succinct exploration of Frankenthaler’s ongoing experiments. In the 1950s, she developed a signature technique of pouring thinned oil paint on raw canvas and allowing the medium to soak into the support. By the early 1960s, she shifted to acrylic paint, enabling more defined edges and precipitating a new emphasis on shape. Attentive to the relationship between painting and landscape, she considered these forms in geographic terms, calling them “districts” or “territories.” By the late 1980s, these material investigations increasingly yielded moodily resonant compositions, like Toward Dark (1988), a recently acquired painting making its MoMA debut.

Ultimately, each fearless development contributes to a distinctive whole. “I’ve explored a variety of directions and themes over the years,” Frankenthaler reflected. “But I think in all my painting you can see the signature of one artist, the work of one wrist.”

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website