Early on, Frankenthaler explored how painting works by deconstructing the works of old masters and creating her own abstract interpretations.[1] As she reflected in 1989: ‘I learned how to look at modern pictures because of old masters, and vice versa.’[2]
Her collection included a print from Utagawa Hiroshige’s woodblock series 100 Famous Views of Edo (1856–8), produced in the Ukiyo-e tradition. In her painting For Hiroshige (1981), Frankenthaler references the 86th print in the series titled Naitō Shinjuku in Yotsuya. However, this allusion is scarcely recognisable in her abstracted interpretation. In her horizontal composition, she centres the horse hoof forms from the bottom part of the woodcut. Rather than the calm gradients of colour often present in her earlier works, this piece features a lively surface. Blurred, impasto areas convey the movement Frankenthaler incorporated into the process. The richness of paint in different ‘states of matter’ constitutes the finesse of her work during this period.
Helen Frankenthaler (1928–2011)
For Hiroshige, 1981
Currently exhibited: Yes (Helen Frankenthaler: Move and Make)
Material: Acrylic paint on canvas
Size: 158.7 x 234 cm
Inv-Nr.: A_35
Image rights: VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn; Copyright: Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, New York
Keywords:
Previous owner: Private collection Belgium, 1982; Previous owner: Private collection, New York
Acquisition: Reinhard Ernst Collection, Sale: Knoedler Gallery, London, 2011
[1] ‘In my love and pursuit of any of the Old Masters, or Cubists, or Manet, Monet, Miró, Gorky, or Pollock, I would wonder how they made their paintings and want to understand them, and take it from there. Sometimes I’d use their works and make my kind of abstract response.’ Quoted in ‘A Conversation, Helen Frankenthaler and Julia Brown’, in After Mountains and Sea: Frankenthaler 1956–1959, exh. cat., Guggenheim New York/Bilbao/Berlin, Ostfildern-Ruit 1998, pp. 29–49, here p. 33.
[2] Helen Frankenthaler, 1989, in Deborah Solomon, ‘Helen Frankenthaler: Artful Survivor’, The New York Times Magazine, 14 May 1989, p. 63.
