Video © Gagosian. Film credits: Helen Frankenthaler, interviewed by Nancy Miller, Frankenthaler’s East 83rd Street studio, New York, 1977: courtesy Albright-Knox Art Gallery; videographer: Chris Crossman. Helen Frankenthaler speaking at Hunter College, April 28, 1965: courtesy Helen Frankenthaler Foundation Archives, New York. Helen Frankenthaler speaking at Duke University, November 2, 1983: courtesy Helen Frankenthaler Foundation Archives, New York. Helen Frankenthaler in her East 83rd Street studio working on Rapunzel (1974), April 1974: photo: Edward Youkilis, courtesy Helen Frankenthaler Foundation Archives, New York. Special thanks to the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, New York, especially Elizabeth Smith and Sarah Haug. All artwork by Helen Frankenthaler © 2016 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. All words by Helen Frankenthaler © 2016 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc.
October 4, 2016
helen frankenthaler:line into color, color into line
Line into Color, Color into Line: Helen Frankenthaler, Paintings, 1962–1987, presented at Gagosian Beverly Hills, comprises eighteen canvases by Frankenthaler from a twenty-five-year time span, selected to reveal how the renowned abstract painter articulated the relationship between drawing and color during this period. To mark the occasion, Gagosian and the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation are pleased to bring you this video of rare archive footage of Frankenthaler on the subject of line and color.
Frankenthaler
John Elderfield and Lauren Mahony discuss Helen Frankenthaler and her work from 1959 to 1962.
John Elderfield and Elizabeth Smith
John Elderfield and Elizabeth Smith discuss the paintings of Helen Frankenthaler on the occasion of Helen Frankenthaler: Composing with Color, Paintings 1962–1963.
In Conversation
Carol Armstrong and John Elderfield
In conjunction with the exhibition Drawing within Nature: Paintings from the 1990s at Gagosian in New York, Carol Armstrong and John Elderfield discuss Helen Frankenthaler’s paintings and large-scale works on paper dating from 1990 to 1995.
The Romance of a New Medium: Helen Frankenthaler and the Art of Collaboration
Inspired by the recent retrospective of Helen Frankenthaler’s woodcuts at the Dulwich Picture Gallery, London, William Davie writes about the artist’s innovative journey with printmaking. Davie illuminates Frankenthaler’s formative collaborations with master printers Tatyana Grosman and Kenneth Tyler.
In Conversation
Katy Hessel, Matthew Holman, and Eleanor Nairne on Helen Frankenthaler
Broadcaster and art historian Katy Hessel; Matthew Holman, associate lecturer in English at University College London; and Eleanor Nairne, curator at the Barbican Art Gallery, London, discuss Helen Frankenthaler’s early training, the development of her signature soak-stain technique and subsequent shifts in style, and her connections to the London art world.
Helen Frankenthaler: A Painter’s Sculptures
On the occasion of four exhibitions in London exploring different aspects of Helen Frankenthaler’s work, Lauren Mahony introduces texts by the sculptor Anthony Caro and by the artist herself on her relatively unfamiliar first body of sculpture, made in the summer of 1972 in Caro’s London studio.
Now available
Gagosian Quarterly Summer 2021
The Summer 2021 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available, featuring Carrie Mae Weems’s The Louvre (2006) on its cover.
Augurs of Spring
As spring approaches in the Northern Hemisphere, Sydney Stutterheim reflects on the iconography and symbolism of the season in art both past and present.
Building a Legacy
The Helen Frankenthaler Foundation on COVID-19 Relief Funding
The Quarterly’s Alison McDonald speaks with Clifford Ross, Frederick J. Iseman, and Dr. Lise Motherwell, members of the board of directors of the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, and Elizabeth Smith, executive director, about the foundation’s decision to establish a multiyear initiative dedicated to providing $5 million in covid-19 relief for artists and arts professionals.
Game Changer
Betty Parsons
Wyatt Allgeier pays homage to the renowned gallerist and artist Betty Parsons (1900–1982).
Abstract Climates: Helen Frankenthaler in Provincetown
Lise Motherwell, a stepdaughter of Helen Frankenthaler and vice president of the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, and Elizabeth Smith, executive director of the Foundation, recently cocurated an exhibition of the artist’s work entitled Abstract Climates: Helen Frankenthaler in Provincetown. Here they discuss the origin of the exhibition, the relationship between the artist’s work and her summers spent in Provincetown, and the presentations at the Provincetown Art Association and Museum, in 2018, and the Parrish Art Museum, Water Mill, New York, in 2019.
Frankenthaler
On the occasion of the exhibition Pittura/Panorama: Paintings by Helen Frankenthaler, 1952–1992, at the Museo di Palazzo Grimani in Venice, Italy, art historians John Elderfield and Pepe Karmel discuss the concept of the panorama in relation to the artist’s work. Their conversation traces developments in Frankenthaler’s approach to composition, the boundaries and conventions of abstraction, and how, in many ways, her career continually challenged established theories of art history.