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拍品專文
A powerfully evocative example of the more mature and embodied period of Helen Frankenthaler’s creative output, Stone exquisitely captures the emotional power and painterly bravura that has established the artist as one of the most innovative and accomplished Color Field painters. Bursts of bright, expressive color circle the gently stained subtle lilac surface of the painting, creating a panoply of forms suggestive of the various shapes latent in natural phenomena: clouds, sunsets, sea foam, and foliage, an effect underlined by Stone’s suggestive title. These splashes and smears of color ricochet across the surface of the canvas, which is layered with atmospheric stains of paint. A tension between the flurries of yellow, white, ochre, and silver and the gently mottled background arises, producing a dramatic illusion of depth and a sense of space beyond the confines of painting’s conventionally flat picture plane.
The perceptual depth of this impressively scaled canvas creates an immersive effect in the viewer, with fields of paint coalescing into organic shapes that seem to pulse with life. The juxtaposition of bold marks against the soft stains creates a layered complexity, suggesting the interplay of light, shadow and form found in the natural world. As Frankenthaler’s placid hues pool around the canvas, they evoke a sense of movement, as if the forms are gently shifting and undulating. Stone’s subtly biomorphic shapes interact dynamically, invoking both earth and sky and the sublime human experience of being in nature. The art critic Barbara Rose pronounced her great admiration for the artist’s particular gift for portraying the “freedom, spontaneity, openness and complexity of an image, not exclusively of the studio or the mind, but intimately tied to nature and human emotions” (B. Rose quoted in New York Times, 27 December 2011). Stone invites the viewer to look longer and deeper, encouraging contemplation and reflection, similarly to Caspar David Friedrich’s emblematic Wanderer above the Sea of Fog.
In his 1971 essay “Frankenthaler as Pastoral,” the influential art critic Lawrence Alloway argues that Frankenthaler’s abstract pictures embody a certain pastoral quality, one distinct from landscape painting but related to the wider experience of man in nature: rather than expressively depicting a natural viewpoint in the sense of early American abstract painters like Arthur Dove and Marsden Hartley, Frankenthaler’s pictures represent “a celebration of human pleasure in what is not man-made. Pastoral, in the sense of a permanent idyll, is not the same as landscape painting, which I take to be based on a place and a time.” (L. Alloway, “Frankenthaler as Pastoral,” ArtNews, November 1971, p. 68). The titles of Frankenthaler’s paintings, both from across her career and from the 1983 André Emmerich Gallery exhibition in which Stone was first shown (Winter Blue, Tip of the Iceberg, Into October) tend to support this interpretation of her work as expressing the experience of nature, rather than attempting to depict or reproduce it.
Frankenthaler, whose storied career spanned six decades, became first known in the 1950s for her then-signature “soak-stain” abstract painting technique, where she poured diluted paints straight onto raw, unprimed canvas, allowing the watered-down pigments to soak directly into the canvas’ weave. This technique conflated the background and surface of her paintings, creating a distinctive ethereal effect that sets her style apart from the comparatively forceful approach of male Abstract Expressionist action painters such as Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollock. Often associated with Abstract Expressionism and Color Field painting, this “soak-stain” technique had an immediate and potent influence on Washington Color School painters Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland, and later, on artists as significant and disparate as Sam Gilliam, Gerhard Richter, and Frank Bowling. Frankenthaler was likewise always reinvigorating her work. By the 1970s, she had modified her trademark technique, with thicker applications of paint and bolder colors, allowing for an even more lasting emotional impact.
Stone’s varied sweep expands on the more austere soak-stain canvases of her early career, reconciling and expanding on her washes of pure color with more energetic and lyrical splatters. While Frankenthaler’s early work is no doubt both striking and significant, her more mature later work, best exemplified by Stone, has a more dynamic quality. Stone’s layered surface positively bursts with depth and movement, with foreground and background receding and folding into each other. Here, she expands on her signature style, producing a canvas that is simultaneously expressive and deeply meditative in tone. It is a profoundly beautiful painting that exemplifies the most developed era of Frankenthaler’s celebrated career.
“What concerns me when I work is not whether the picture is a landscape, or whether it's pastoral, or whether somebody will see a sunset in it. What concerns me is - did I make a beautiful picture?” Helen Frankenthaler
Speaking to the New York Times in 1989, Helen Frankenthaler expressed her personal approach to artmaking and aesthetics, Frankenthaler said “What concerns me when I work is not whether the picture is a landscape, or whether it's pastoral, or whether somebody will see a sunset in it. What concerns me is - did I make a beautiful picture?'' (D. Solomon, “Artful Survivor,” The New York Times, 14 May 1989, p. 31). Frankenthaler remained most concerned with the intrinsic aesthetic properties of her paintings, focused on producing stunning canvases that provoke a transporting effect in the viewer. Stone is a breathtaking display of an artist at the fullest extent of her powers.
The perceptual depth of this impressively scaled canvas creates an immersive effect in the viewer, with fields of paint coalescing into organic shapes that seem to pulse with life. The juxtaposition of bold marks against the soft stains creates a layered complexity, suggesting the interplay of light, shadow and form found in the natural world. As Frankenthaler’s placid hues pool around the canvas, they evoke a sense of movement, as if the forms are gently shifting and undulating. Stone’s subtly biomorphic shapes interact dynamically, invoking both earth and sky and the sublime human experience of being in nature. The art critic Barbara Rose pronounced her great admiration for the artist’s particular gift for portraying the “freedom, spontaneity, openness and complexity of an image, not exclusively of the studio or the mind, but intimately tied to nature and human emotions” (B. Rose quoted in New York Times, 27 December 2011). Stone invites the viewer to look longer and deeper, encouraging contemplation and reflection, similarly to Caspar David Friedrich’s emblematic Wanderer above the Sea of Fog.
In his 1971 essay “Frankenthaler as Pastoral,” the influential art critic Lawrence Alloway argues that Frankenthaler’s abstract pictures embody a certain pastoral quality, one distinct from landscape painting but related to the wider experience of man in nature: rather than expressively depicting a natural viewpoint in the sense of early American abstract painters like Arthur Dove and Marsden Hartley, Frankenthaler’s pictures represent “a celebration of human pleasure in what is not man-made. Pastoral, in the sense of a permanent idyll, is not the same as landscape painting, which I take to be based on a place and a time.” (L. Alloway, “Frankenthaler as Pastoral,” ArtNews, November 1971, p. 68). The titles of Frankenthaler’s paintings, both from across her career and from the 1983 André Emmerich Gallery exhibition in which Stone was first shown (Winter Blue, Tip of the Iceberg, Into October) tend to support this interpretation of her work as expressing the experience of nature, rather than attempting to depict or reproduce it.
Frankenthaler, whose storied career spanned six decades, became first known in the 1950s for her then-signature “soak-stain” abstract painting technique, where she poured diluted paints straight onto raw, unprimed canvas, allowing the watered-down pigments to soak directly into the canvas’ weave. This technique conflated the background and surface of her paintings, creating a distinctive ethereal effect that sets her style apart from the comparatively forceful approach of male Abstract Expressionist action painters such as Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollock. Often associated with Abstract Expressionism and Color Field painting, this “soak-stain” technique had an immediate and potent influence on Washington Color School painters Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland, and later, on artists as significant and disparate as Sam Gilliam, Gerhard Richter, and Frank Bowling. Frankenthaler was likewise always reinvigorating her work. By the 1970s, she had modified her trademark technique, with thicker applications of paint and bolder colors, allowing for an even more lasting emotional impact.
Stone’s varied sweep expands on the more austere soak-stain canvases of her early career, reconciling and expanding on her washes of pure color with more energetic and lyrical splatters. While Frankenthaler’s early work is no doubt both striking and significant, her more mature later work, best exemplified by Stone, has a more dynamic quality. Stone’s layered surface positively bursts with depth and movement, with foreground and background receding and folding into each other. Here, she expands on her signature style, producing a canvas that is simultaneously expressive and deeply meditative in tone. It is a profoundly beautiful painting that exemplifies the most developed era of Frankenthaler’s celebrated career.
“What concerns me when I work is not whether the picture is a landscape, or whether it's pastoral, or whether somebody will see a sunset in it. What concerns me is - did I make a beautiful picture?” Helen Frankenthaler
Speaking to the New York Times in 1989, Helen Frankenthaler expressed her personal approach to artmaking and aesthetics, Frankenthaler said “What concerns me when I work is not whether the picture is a landscape, or whether it's pastoral, or whether somebody will see a sunset in it. What concerns me is - did I make a beautiful picture?'' (D. Solomon, “Artful Survivor,” The New York Times, 14 May 1989, p. 31). Frankenthaler remained most concerned with the intrinsic aesthetic properties of her paintings, focused on producing stunning canvases that provoke a transporting effect in the viewer. Stone is a breathtaking display of an artist at the fullest extent of her powers.