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Lot Essay
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 the she did that—there is something in it that has not got to do with beautiful art to me. And I usually throw those 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
An enthrallingly dynamic canvas of deep indigo, misty purples, and sultry maroons, Helen Frankenthaler’s Glacial Blue confronts the viewer with its voluptuous surface and chromatic intensity. Its manifold surface manifests the artist’s increasing interest in the building up textures on the surface of the canvas. As a painter who defies straightforward representation of her sources but focuses on their forms of existence, Frankenthaler exploits her palette and techniques to evoke the force of compression and condensation rather than the serenity and openness commonly found in glacier landscapes or winter landscapes of Impressionism. The resulting tempestuous picture conjures a sublime sensation akin to John Martin’s apocalyptic landscapes and Jackson Pollock’s imposing, gestural splatters.
Nearly monochromic from afar, Glacial Blue reveals its tonal intricacies slowly, shifting with light, environment, and angle. Pools of azurite, indigo, violet, and plum undulate on the soak-stained canvas, bathing the viewer with an enigmatic aura. Upon close viewing, one would find the colors do not meld together seamlessly. Instead, they “have been meshed and folded, one into the other, for unnamable hues” (T. Hess, quoted in J. Elderfield, Frankenthaler, New York, 1989, p.304.). The tranquilizing depth of these sensuous blues and purples is brilliantly counterbalanced by a series of tactile marks. Streaks of red punctuate the opulent, soak-stained canvas in the left register, while the gestural strokes of deep blue encroach from the upper right edge. The spatter of crimson red tears through the center ground with strong tactility, conveying a certain sense of aggressiveness, even violence. Dashes of bright yellow that appear at times on top or underneath the darker marks add subtle dimensions to the layering. The amorphous clumps of white coagulate the artist’s resolute gesture into relief. Drying and hardening in contrast to the soft evanescence and fluidity of the rest, they elevate the painting to a remarkably complex composition.
Painted in 1979, Glacial Blue dates from Frankenthaler’s highly acclaimed period of production in the mid-to-late-1970s, by which the artist had amassed a repertoire of techniques and markings that established her as among the most brilliant and inventive painters of the period. At the end of the decade, she began to innovate further with monochromatic works, and the physical handling of the surface comes to participate in the work’s expressive meaning. As she once expressed: “I want more struggle in the work—I’m wrestling it out, going on, doing more to each picture” (H. Frankenthaler in conversation with J. Elderfield, in Frankenthaler, New York, 1989, p. 288). Yet, she never loses the visual intensity and immediacy of her “one-shot” paintings. It is her ability to transform repeated, calculated efforts into an immediate image that makes her work so compelling and enduring. In Glacial Blue, the vigorous dashes and drops culminates a flux of energy that inheres in the dissolving washes of colors, forming a sense of flow and structure that point to an artist who trusts not only her canvas and pigment but also her intuition and experience in the present moment. Executed with a masterly technique and characterized by lustrous textures and hues, Glacial Blue is a piece of work expressive of both its materials and its maker.
—Helen Frankenthaler
An enthrallingly dynamic canvas of deep indigo, misty purples, and sultry maroons, Helen Frankenthaler’s Glacial Blue confronts the viewer with its voluptuous surface and chromatic intensity. Its manifold surface manifests the artist’s increasing interest in the building up textures on the surface of the canvas. As a painter who defies straightforward representation of her sources but focuses on their forms of existence, Frankenthaler exploits her palette and techniques to evoke the force of compression and condensation rather than the serenity and openness commonly found in glacier landscapes or winter landscapes of Impressionism. The resulting tempestuous picture conjures a sublime sensation akin to John Martin’s apocalyptic landscapes and Jackson Pollock’s imposing, gestural splatters.
Nearly monochromic from afar, Glacial Blue reveals its tonal intricacies slowly, shifting with light, environment, and angle. Pools of azurite, indigo, violet, and plum undulate on the soak-stained canvas, bathing the viewer with an enigmatic aura. Upon close viewing, one would find the colors do not meld together seamlessly. Instead, they “have been meshed and folded, one into the other, for unnamable hues” (T. Hess, quoted in J. Elderfield, Frankenthaler, New York, 1989, p.304.). The tranquilizing depth of these sensuous blues and purples is brilliantly counterbalanced by a series of tactile marks. Streaks of red punctuate the opulent, soak-stained canvas in the left register, while the gestural strokes of deep blue encroach from the upper right edge. The spatter of crimson red tears through the center ground with strong tactility, conveying a certain sense of aggressiveness, even violence. Dashes of bright yellow that appear at times on top or underneath the darker marks add subtle dimensions to the layering. The amorphous clumps of white coagulate the artist’s resolute gesture into relief. Drying and hardening in contrast to the soft evanescence and fluidity of the rest, they elevate the painting to a remarkably complex composition.
Painted in 1979, Glacial Blue dates from Frankenthaler’s highly acclaimed period of production in the mid-to-late-1970s, by which the artist had amassed a repertoire of techniques and markings that established her as among the most brilliant and inventive painters of the period. At the end of the decade, she began to innovate further with monochromatic works, and the physical handling of the surface comes to participate in the work’s expressive meaning. As she once expressed: “I want more struggle in the work—I’m wrestling it out, going on, doing more to each picture” (H. Frankenthaler in conversation with J. Elderfield, in Frankenthaler, New York, 1989, p. 288). Yet, she never loses the visual intensity and immediacy of her “one-shot” paintings. It is her ability to transform repeated, calculated efforts into an immediate image that makes her work so compelling and enduring. In Glacial Blue, the vigorous dashes and drops culminates a flux of energy that inheres in the dissolving washes of colors, forming a sense of flow and structure that point to an artist who trusts not only her canvas and pigment but also her intuition and experience in the present moment. Executed with a masterly technique and characterized by lustrous textures and hues, Glacial Blue is a piece of work expressive of both its materials and its maker.