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Student Union Collection |
Helen
Frankenthaler
American, born 1928
Untitled, 1963
acrylic on paper
14” x 17”
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In 1952 twenty-four-year old Helen Frankenthaler
made history in the New York art world when she developed her
soak-stain technique. Extending Jackson Pollock's method of applying
paint to unprimed canvases on the floor, she thinned her oils
with turpentine and allowed the pigments to soak directly into
the canvas. [This created a closer relationship between image
and surface, and yet the visibility of the canvas beneath the
painted surface negated the sense of illusion and depth.] Mountains
and Sea was her breakthrough painting.
Frankenthaler came from a
privileged background that facilitated her access to the art
culture of New York. After studying art
at New York's Dalton School and Vermont's Bennington College
and with Hans Hoffman, she became critic Clement Greenberg's
protégé and an important figure in the second generation
of Abstract Expressionist artists. [She and Abstract Expressionist
artist Robert Motherwell were married from 1958-1971.]
In 1963, the date of the
Wake Forest piece, Frankenthaler began working almost exclusively
with acrylics. Acrylic paint tends
to flood more than stain, thus producing a sharper line and less
of a transparent image than the oils. Typical of Frankenthaler's
work, there is a strong sense of technical play and of the relationships
between color and shape.
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