Helen Frankenthaler ~ Spaced Out Orbit and Photographs

When I see works of art, I usually end up wondering who the artists were, how did they live their lives, what did they look like? Earlier in this week on Helen Frankenthaler and Spaced Out Orbit, I posted a video about her and her life (linked here). Since then I've begun looking for images of her on the internet and have found a number that show her and some that show her with her art. Here's what I've collected so far.

The Early Years – 1950's

Jackson Pollock, Clement Greenberg, Helen Frankenthaler, Lee Krasner and an unidentified child

1957 from Life

The 1960's and one from 1970
"There are no rules. That is how art is born, how breakthroughs happen. Go against the rules or ignore the rules. That is what invention is about."

During this period Helen Frankenthaler was married to Robert Motherwell




1970
After Motherwell
Frankenthaler and Motherwell divorced in 1971. Spaced Out Orbit was painted in 1973. She made several trips West during the seventies. Our Orbit may have been the result of one of those trips. Here she is in the next two decades...

1984
1991

"A really good picture looks as if it's happened at once. It's an immediate image. For my own work, when a picture looks labored and overworked, and you can read in it--well, she did this and then she did that, and then she did that--there is something in it that has not got to do with beautiful art to me. And I usually throw these out, though I think very often it takes ten of those over-labored efforts to produce one really beautiful wrist motion that is synchronized with your head and heart, and you have it, and therefore it looks as if it were born in a minute." ...Helen Frankenthaler

Helen Frankenthaler will turn 81 on December 12. I share her birthday and that pleases me.

Helen Frankenthaler ~ Spaced Out Orbit and the Clement Greenberg Collection

How is it that the Portland Art Museum has such a strong collection of painters representing Abstract Expressionism (Frankenthaler, Hoffman, Pollock, Gottlieb), Color Field movement (Noland, Louis, Olitiski and Dzubas) and Post-Painterly Abstraction (Bannard, Poons) (amongst others in each area)? Well, these were all painters who art critic Clement Greenberg in the 1950's and later championed as being integral to the new movement of painting in New York City. They were his friends and as such he was able to amass a collection of art from them. The art filled his home (Spaced Out Orbit hung behind Greenberg's desk chair for sometime) and storage areas. So much so that when he died in 1994, his widow Janice Van Horne took nearly all of what Greenberg had collected and sold it en masse so that 159 works of art could be acquired by the Portland Art Museum in 2000. PAM's collection went from 0 to warp speed in this area of art overnight. Although some parts of the collection are scattered throughout the CMCA (Center for Modern and Contemporary Art), e.g. Horacio Torres nude study is on the third floor, most of the collection that is exhibited is on the second floor.

Helen Frankenthaler's Spaced Out Orbit hangs next to Jules Olitski's The Prince Patusky (a story for another time). On the adjoining wall are Kenneth Noland's No. 1, and Friedel Dzubas' Found. Dzubas and Frankenthaler were sharing a studio on West 23rd in 1952. The night Frankenthaler officially finished Mountains and Sea, Dzubas called Clement Greenberg to announce that he needed to get right over because something odd and beautiful had emerged. Later, Greenberg who was Frankenthaler's lover at this point decided to invite two friends to Frankenthaler's studio -- Kenneth Noland and Morris Louis. Both of these men were bowled over by what they saw. The three Noland, Louis, and Dzubas along with Olitski quickly adapted the pour/stain technique to their painting style. Frankenthaler was an integral part of the development of Color Field Painting.

Helen Frankenthaler ~ Spaced Out Orbit descended from Mountains and Sea

Earlier in the week, I mentioned that Spaced Out Orbit is an example of the staining technique called "soak-stain" Helen Frankenthaler had developed in 1952 and first used on the painting Mountains and Sea. Frankenthaler had seen Jackson Pollock with his canvases on the floor and dripping and pouring his beautiful fractals. What she did was to place a giant canvas on the floor, seven by 10 feet, dilute her oils with a mixture that included turpentine and proceed to pour the paint onto unprimed canvas. What happened was that the paint seeped into the canvas becoming an integral part of it. She didn't just leave the paint there though -- working the paint with brushes and blotters. Some have said the overall effect of this soak stain was that of a watercolor with the personality of an oil. Frankenthaler moved on from using thinned oils though. She had noticed that the thinned oils left a faint oily stain around each color area. In 1962 she began to use thinned acrylics to create her soak-stain paintings. Thinned with water, the paint left no halo effect, the colors seemed brighter and more intense. During this time she also began to leave some of the areas of her canvas blank to "let it breathe". Spaced Out Orbit is one of Frankenthaler's acrylics. Painted in 1973, it is quite small at 42" x 72" compared to the size of Mountains and Sea.

Doing a search for videos on Helen Frankenthaler will net you some compilations of her life and work as the one I posted on Friday (linked here). You'll also find these two videos of how to do the soak-stain method with multiple references to our woman Helen Frankenthaler.
Stain Painting Part I from Portland State University


Stain Painting Part 2 from Portland State University

Like a Ship at Sea, The Mirage of an Arabian City

There is something so wonderfully feminine, loose and liquid about Frankenthaler's work. It is like air and water and dripping cracked eggs. Her paintings are boundary-less, there are no hard edges, just endings to colors that become other colors. The pink of Spaced Out Orbit has a quality so vast, as if it is a city floating out in front of me, far away. Or a ship on the sea. Wherever it is, it carries it's own atmosphere. What I love about Spaces Out Orbit is that Frankenthaler knew when to stop. It is a skill to not go too far, and for her to have left so much empty space and to have known the delicate balance of completion, shows her intuitive wisdom. She often covered her canvases head to toe, take a look.
Here is "Seeing the Moon on a Hot Summer Day" done in 1987. Beautiful, amazing, but full. Or check out the one below, "May 26th Backwards" done in 1961. That's my birthday.

From the same website where I pulled these images, I found these Frankenthaler quotes.

"I had the landscape in my arms as I painted it. I had the landscape in my mind and shoulder and wrist."

"Every canvas is a journey all its own."

It is almost like birth, her paintings. It is almost like she is giving life to something that was already there, and she knows it.

Space Cloud, Mirah's Serenade

Today I will be writing about the local singer and songwriter, Mirah. Watch this clip of her with the Portland Cello Project, from January of this year:

Mirah, Portland Cello Project & Flash Choir - Generosity from Jon Manning on Vimeo.

Frankenthaler's Spaced Out Orbit became the inspiration to a Mirah song in September at the museum's event Shine A Light. The Museum invited the PSU Social Practice Program to have an event inviting a new and young crowd to the museum for one late night. Each student was given a stipend for an art project, one student invited local musicians to "serenade" particular works of art. Mirah chose Helen Frankenthaler's Spaced Out Orbit. I cannot help but hum the ethereal acoustic minor chord lyrics in my mind when I see the piece. Mirah stood barefoot with her guitar which dwarfed her, in front of the crowd. She is a tiny thing, Spaced out Orbit floated behind her. It was the final event of the evening, at just before midnight. The words I remember her repeating go "on a space cloud with you" and the song seemed, to me, to be about a passionate relationship that had no grounding.
The sweet and melancholy chord slides up the scale as it passes over the word "space" and lands smoothly on the word cloud.
Here is what Mirah had to say in an interview with Popcorn Youth a few years ago:
"But the really nice thing about playing solo is the way that I’m able to concentrate on stage. I can be easily distracted by other people. Like, ‘How are they doing? Are they okay?’ (Laughs) So I have these issues and I try to work on them in my life. Solo shows are focused and personal time for me."
It makes sense that Mirah, as an artist, would take the inspiration of Frankenthaler for her "focused and personal artistic moment" at the museum event. The relationship she sang about put the two women together, for me. The song she wrote is not one I ever expect to hear again, but it lives inside that painting now.

Helen Frankenthaler ~ Spaced Out Orbit

Here it is Week 46 of 52 Pieces. That leaves six more weeks. For all of you who read this regularly you'll notice that I seldom write too very much about myself. Spaced Out Orbit combined with Orphee last night has put a different slant on my perspective. Helen Frankenthaler is our person of the week. She is an outstanding artist who was the one who put the color field painters on the map. Not to say that they would have never gotten there but, hey, they were all men – Kenneth Noland, Jules Ulitski (my favorite), Jackson Pollock and the whole raft of others who floated into the genre. Without her in 1952, thinning out her paint mixture and flowing it onto her unprimed canvas to create Mountains and Sea, all of those men would have continued on as Abstract Expressionists for who knows how many years.

There are any number of biographies of Helen Frankenthaler out there that will tell you that and that she and Clement Greenberg were lovers before she married Robert Motherwell, that she was the daughter of a prominent New York judge, that she was well educated and that she held her own in the 50's 60's and on into the 21st century. Helen Frankenthaler celebrated her 80th birthday in 2008 on December 12. She has created works of art in painting and printmaking for more than sixty years. Well, I've written almost two paragraphs and realize that I've only talked about Helen Frankenthaler and nothing about what I was originally planning on writing. Frankenthaler is that enthralling. It's been a tough day, I'll leave that soap opera for another time. I will say that instead of reading all of the bios on Frankenthaler, take a few minutes and view this very well put together video that was made in honor of her 80th birthday. I had no idea before seeing this that she was such a hottie. There is no wonder that she and the critic Clement Greenberg were lovers for six years and that Robert Motherwell later married her. If I I had been a man in the 1950's, I would have wanted to have dated her, married her, been the father of her children. Most of all I would have wanted to have worked near her as did artists like Kenneth Noland and Morris Louis. Here is to Helen Frankenthaler as we approach her 81st birthday, not one I'll forget since she and I share birthdays.

Helen Frankenthaler ~ Spaced Out Orbit

Helen Frankenthaler painted Spaced Out Orbit in 1973. The Portland Art Museum acquired this painting as well as 150 other works of art from Clement Greenberg's estate in early 2000. There's much to write about Frankenthaler, Greenberg and the Portland Art Museum's aquisition during the next week. For now just take in the lushness of that pink swath floating across this immense canvas.

Or emerging from another world. Having just returned from the 12 November performance of Glass' Orphee here in Portland, I'm thinking Underworld, other world. And Spaced Out Orbit seems to be coming at me from somewhere else. Emerging through the mirror and now with me to join this world for some period of time.