Published by Radius Books/Helen Frankenthaler Foundation. Text by Douglas Dreishpoon, Suzanne Boorsch. Preface by Elizabeth Smith. Interview by Katharina Gross, Pepe Karmel, Mary Weatherford.
Exploring works from the later period of Helen Frankenthaler’s life, Late Works, 1988–2009 features approximately 50 plates and archival images dating from 1988 to 2009. Originally inspired by the exhibition curated by Douglas Dreishpoon (Director of the Helen Frankenthaler Catalogue Raisonné and Chief Curator Emeritus of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery), the book expands upon the original exhibition to include a wide range of important pieces from this prolific period in the artist's career. Through her invention of the soak-stain technique, Frankenthaler expanded the possibilities of abstract painting while referencing figuration and landscape in unique ways. In her later years, her practice continued to evolve through her use of diverse mediums and processes, as she shifted from painting canvas on the floor to using larger sheets of paper that were laid out on the floor or on tabletops for easier accessibility. The continuity between the late work and what came before is striking. Helen Frankenthaler (1928–2011) has long been recognized as one of the great American artists of the 20th century. She was eminent among the second generation of postwar American abstract painters and is widely credited for playing a pivotal role in the transition from Abstract Expressionism to Color Field painting with her invention of the soak-stain technique, which involved pouring thinned paint directly onto unprimed canvas. The juxtaposition of amorphous fields of color and gestural brushstrokes produces a vigorous rhythm of activity that seems to convey both the expanse of landscape and the surface texture of mark-making.
Published by Walther König, Köln. Text by Douglas Dreishpoon, Nadine Engel, Mary Gabriel, Peter Gorschlüter, Elizabeth Smith, Florian Steininger.
In this volume, around 70 works on paper from the late 1940s to the early 2000s are juxtaposed with a selection of paintings—around 10 key works—from each phase in the august career of Helen Frankenthaler (1928–2011). For example, the monumental work Salome (1978) is set alongside stylistically related paintings on paper from the same year. Similarly, the watercolor Great Meadows (1951), from the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, functions as a decisive precedent for the staining and dripping procedures created the following year, most famously Mountains and Sea (1952)—the key Abstract Expressionist painting in Frankenthaler’s oeuvre. In some phases the medium of paper dominates, especially in the later work—abstract landscapes with a horizon as well as polychrome color fields. The majority of the works depicted in the catalog come from the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation in New York, supplemented by private collections and institutions.
Published by Knoedler & Company. Text by Karen Wilkin.
Frankenthaler at Eighty commemorates painter Helen Frankenthaler's eightieth birthday with a selection of masterworks from her own collection. Published concurrently with an exhibition at New York's Knoedler & Company, this handsome volume--the cover of which features Frankenthaler's great painting, "A Green Thought in a Green Shade" (1981)--pays tribute to the painter's long and distinguished career, with a fully illustrated survey of the works chosen for the exhibition, which represent quintessential paintings from each period of her career. Also included are historic photographs of Frankenthaler and a detailed chronology studded with reprinted images from periodicals, including art magazine covers. An essay by curator Karen Wilkin--who worked closely with Frankenthaler in the curation of this exhibition, and who has worked with the painter extensively for decades--sheds new light on the painter's tremendous contribution to American art during the last half-century.
PUBLISHER Knoedler & Company
BOOK FORMAT Clth, 11.25 x 12.25 in. / 74 pgs / 26 color / 17 duotone.
PUBLISHING STATUS Pub Date 10/31/2009 Out of print
DISTRIBUTION D.A.P. Exclusive Catalog: FALL 2009 p. 98
PRODUCT DETAILS ISBN 9780982074909TRADE List Price: $50.00 CDN $60.00
Published by Guggenheim Museum Publications. Essays by Susan Cross and Julia Brown.
In 1952, at the age of 23, Helen Frankenthaler created her legendary painting Mountains and Sea. She poured thinned-down pigment directly onto unprimed canvas to be absorbed into its fibers. This large painting, the first in which Frankenthaler used her soak-stain technique, synthesized the influences that had informed her work to that point and announces her arrival as a mature artist. Published to accompany a 1998 exhibition at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, this book focuses on Mountains and Sea and other groundbreaking paintings of Frankenthaler's early career. In this period, Frankenthaler drew upon Cubism, the abstractions of Arshile Gorky and, especially, those of Jackson Pollock, whose radical technique inspired her to reject easel painting. Frankenthaler herself became associated with the second generation of the New York School and her unique method and experimental use of materials influenced her contemporaries and subsequent generations of artists.
Helen Frankenthaler: Painterly Constellations
Frankenthaler at Eighty
After Mountains And Sea: Frankenthaler 1956-1959