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HELEN FRANKENTHALER:
TWO FLORIDA EXHIBITS
The Naples Museum Of Art And The Museum Of Contemporary Art
Showcase The Artist's Woodcuts And Paintings On Paper Text
Laura Litinsky
Photography
Courtesy of Naples Museum of Art, Naples, FL, and
Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami, FL
ABOVE: Helen Frankenthaler begins the arduous process of translating a painting into a woodcut. |
 elen Frankenthaler, one of the foremost artists of the 20th century, says the "search for quality" drives her work. "You can't be a perfectionist in life, but you can try for it in your work. Sometimes it requires agonizing labor until you get the result
that's sitting there and works."
Frankenthaler's breakthrough canvas, "Mountains and Sea," done in 1952, was one of the first paintings in which diluted oil paint was poured onto unprimed canvas to stain the surface with washes of transparent color. This masterpiece helped thrust abstract art toward the Modernists' ideal of color and canvas becoming a unified field. Her work is seen as a key transition from Jackson Pollock's "Action" paintings and Morris Louis' and Kenneth Noland's "Colour Field" paintings.
Admirers of Frankenthaler can enjoy major exhibitions of her work at two Florida museums. "Frankenthaler: The Woodcuts" is on view at the Naples Museum of Art through March 23, 2003, while "Frankenthaler: Paintings on Paper (1949-2002)" is on exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Art in North Miami until June 8, 2003.
ABOVE:
Six woodcuts encompass Frankenthaler's "Tales of Genji" series. Luminous pinks and reds wash over "Tales of Genji IV," 1998.
BELOW: "Tales of Genji I," 1998, is a 34-color woodcut on light sienna handmade paper.
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Though both exhibits showcase Frankenthaler's use of media other than canvas, they pay tribute to the singular sense of color and form that has made her a leader in the contemporary art world. "Frankenthaler: The Woodcuts" spans a 30-year period and includes more than 60 pieces of her work. "The Naples Museum of Art was honored to work in collaboration with many talented individuals to present the first retrospective of Frankenthaler's woodcuts," says Myra Janco Daniels, chairman, president and CEO of Naples Museum of Art. "Not only is the art exciting, but Frankenthaler is exciting to work with."
Traditionally, woodcut prints are made by placing paper on top of a carved and painted block of wood and then pressing the paper until it absorbs the colors and design. But when Frankenthaler began experimenting with woodcuts, she wanted to create abstract prints with the vitality and texture of paintings on wood.
"The process is totally different from painting or lithography or etching or anything else," Frankenthaler says. "As with any other medium, I had to learn from what it offered, what it resisted and what I could bring to it." Judith Goldman, who is the exhibit's guest curator and the former print curator of the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, says Frankenthaler's woodcuts are "a landmark in her evolution as an artist and in the evolution of the woodcut medium."
Though Frankenthaler has always painted on paper as well as on canvas, she has worked almost exclusively on paper for the last 10 years. MOCA's exhibit, "Frankenthaler: Paintings on Paper (1949-2002)," focuses on pieces from this period, along with others
from the artist's body of work.
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