December 28, 2011

RIP

Helen Frankenthaler





















December 12th, 1928- December 26th 2011

Abstract painter Helen Frankenthaler dies at 83
Synopsis
Helen Frankenthaler is an American-born painter, printmaker, and sculptor who, along with fellow artists Kenneth Noland and Morris Louis, spearheaded the practice of Color Field painting, a component of Abstract Expressionism. Her innovative technique, along with her use of landscape to inform her abstract work, changed the way artists conceived of and used color in their own work and made her the most prominent female member of the Abstract Expressionist and Color Field Painting movements.


Key Ideas / Information


•Frankenthaler echoed Jackson Pollock in both the large scale of her canvases and her decision to paint on the floor rather than on an easel. Unlike Pollock, however, her paintings conveyed a tranquil experience of the natural world rather than an intermittently ominous sense of the sublime.


•Frankenthaler emphasized the role of her "wrist" as her own personal artistic signature and in this way aligned herself with the Abstract Expressionists and the importance they placed on the visibility of "the artist's hand" in a painting.


•Frankenthaler's use of light hearkens back to landscape painters of earlier centuries who used light from the natural world to define focal points and illuminate their works, but absent in her work is the religious sentiment they sought to inspire.


TheArtstory.org

December 20, 2011

Literary Pick (**)

She's Come Undone
-Wally Lamb

December 16, 2011

Quote of the Day

Only when the last tree has died
and the last river been poisoned
and the last fish been caught
will we realise we cannot eat money


-Cree Indian Proverb