TitleCauseway
Artist
Helen Frankenthaler
(American, 1928 - 2011)
Date2001
MediumColor spit-bite aquatint with softground on cream wove paper
DimensionsSheet size: 28 1/2 × 37 3/4 in.
Plate size: 21 13/16 × 31 13/16 in.
Image size: 21 9/16 × 31 9/16 in.
Mat size: 36 × 28 in.
EditionA.P. 14/24 (published edition of 100)
SignedSigned in graphite at BR: "Frankenthaler '01".
SubmissionNA diploma presentation, March 20, 2002
Credit LineNational Academy of Design, New York, NY
Object number2002.5
Label TextA pioneer among revolutionaries, Helen Frankenthaler has been hailed as one of the principal vanguards of modern abstract art. The daughter of a New York State Supreme Judge, Frankenthaler received her initial artistic training at the Dalton School under the celebrated Mexican artist, Rufino Tamayo. In March of 1946 she entered Bennington College in Vermont and continued her studies under Paul Feeley, who introduced her to the spatial mechanics of Cubism. Such exposure motivated Frankenthaler "to push the development of Cubism so that line per se disappeared." At the suggestion of critic Clement Greenberg, Frankenthaler spent three weeks in 1950 under Hans Hofmann's tutelage, learning his "push-pull" theory that used contrasting colors to balance flatness and depth. A year later she had her first solo exhibition at the Tibor de Nagy Gallery and formed close relationships with Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner, whose paintings were having an increasing influence on her artistic output. In 1952, at the age of twenty-three, Frankenthaler premiered her groundbreaking stain technique with the monumental canvas, "Mountains and Sea." With no compositional predecessor, she transformed Pollock's calligraphic line into pure color and form, freeing abstract art from its script-like function and embracing color's translucent depth. Her uniquely intense yet graceful compositions were created by thinning pigment to the consistency of watercolor and applying it to an unprimed canvas. The process liberated paint from the constraints of the brush and allowed the inherent, amorphous characteristics of the medium to act out their intrinsic properties on the compositional field. Her innovation has been acknowledged as the umbilical link between the gestural paintings of Jackson Pollock and the color field works of Morris Louis.
Frankenthaler once stated, "I'd rather risk an ugly surprise than rely on things I know I can do." With an unquenchable thirst for exploration, she began experimenting with printmaking in the early 1960s. "Causeway" is the result of a continual search, growth, and evolution. Like the meeting of primordial tissue, the print's veils of color float across the framed expanse, suggesting the mysterious depths of life's origin. Whereas her early work combined gesture with amorphous form, "Causeway" remains dedicated to the primary tenant of abstraction-truth to the medium. The overlapping colors seep into one another, integrating illusionistic space into clouds of pigment as they continually flow and expand beyond the material frame. Frankenthaler's earlier work sought to reconcile the dualities of nature, while "Causeway" embraces dissonance as a fundamental unit within nature. The composition's subject is the primal interaction of natural elements and the awareness of the primordial enigma that can only be realized after a lifetime of investigation.
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