Helen Frankenthaler: Quotes about painting

“For me, being a 'lady painter' was never an issue. I don't resent being a female painter. I don't exploit it. I paint.”

Helen Frankenthaler

Quote by John Gruen, in 'The Party's Over Now: Reminiscences of the fifties — New York's artists, writers, musicians, and their friends'; Viking Press, 1972 - ISBN 0-916366-54-5; as cited by by Grace Glueck, in 'New York Times', 2011
1970s - 1980s

Painting

“[.. feel interested in] Things that are not overworked, that are in essence light. In other words, the great Cezannes that are not all filled in.... while I can recognize a master piece that is heavily painted or darkly painted or painted in layers as great and sublime, it would not be my choice to hang a - [inaudible] - for five years if I could instead perhaps have a Cezanne of the kind I just described. Or a certain kind of Matisse. Or one of those large Rubens sketches, where the first breath of feeling is the picture, rather than the labor and the gift.”

Helen Frankenthaler

quote about 'light' paintings
1960s, Interview with Barbara Rose', Archives - American Art, 1968

Feeling , Light , Painting

“It [the drip-paintings of Jackson Pollock ] was original, and it was beautiful, and it was new, and it was saying the most that could be said in painting up to that point - and it really drew me in. I was in awe of it, and I wanted to get at why.”

Helen Frankenthaler

remembering November 1950, when Greenberg escorted her to a show of Pollock's work at the Betty Parsons Gallery
1970s - 1980s, interview with Deborah Salomon in 'New York Times', 1989

Beauty , Painting

“.. I think the thing that hit me most of all [at the Pollock-show, 1951] was that while I knew it was a fact, it became a physical necessity to get pictures off the easel, and therefore for me not even on a wall but the reach or fluidity of working from above down into a field [so: on the floor].... But it really registered [later] when I saw his [Pollock's] studio and he unrolled his paintings on the floor that he had painted them on. Now I was never drawn to the idea of a stick dipped in a huge can. One thing I have never liked is a drip, I mean.. it's a kind of boring accident to me, a drip. There are many accidents that are very rich that you use, but if you exploit a drip it's very boring and familiar to begin with. Drips are drips. Whereas blocks have never been drips, and haven't been, but, people don't know blocks the way they know drips. And blocks can become lines, and drips become lines in a very facile, easy way.”

Helen Frankenthaler

quote about Pollock's drip-painting, 1951
1960s, Interview with Barbara Rose', Archives - American Art, 1968

People , Way , Idea , Thinking

“I really learned how to look at art.... before 1960. And in a sense that sharpened my eye for abstract pictures. Because, it's light in the painting that makes it work. It's light in the painting that makes it work.”

Helen Frankenthaler

quote about the role of light
1960s, Interview with Barbara Rose', Archives - American Art, 1968

Art , Sense , Light , Learning

“Well, I think it [painting] is a life measuring stick. And I'm concerned with being myself, getting to know more and more what that is, what is possible, and what the real meaning of beauty and development is. I'm concerned with development and growth. But I am in my everyday life. I hate to feel deadly. But that does not mean that repetition or experiment isn't in the total picture of growth and development. And I think that pace and place differently at different times for each person.”

Helen Frankenthaler

quote about her attitude
1960s, Interview with Barbara Rose', Archives - American Art, 1968

Life , Hate , Beauty , Feeling

“Every so often, every artist feels: 'I'll never paint again. The muse has gone out the window.' In 1985 I hardly painted at all for three months, and it was agonizing. I looked at reproductions. I stared at Matisse. I stared at the Old Masters. I stared at the Quattrocento. And I thought to myself - Don't push it! If you try too hard to get at something, you almost push it away.”

Helen Frankenthaler

1970s - 1980s, interview with Deborah Salomon in 'New York Times', 1989

Feeling , Painting

“I had no desire to copy Pollock. I didn't want to take a stick and dip it in a can of enamel [paint]. I needed something more liquid, watery, thinner. All my life, I have been drawn to water and translucency. I love the water; I love to swim, to watch changing seascapes. One of my favorite childhood games was to fill a sink with water and punt nail polish into to see what happened when the colors burst up the surface, merging into each other as floating, changing shapes.”

Helen Frankenthaler

Quote from Abstract Expressionism, Barbara Hess, Taschen, Köln, 2006, p. 80
1990s - 2000s

Love , Life , Color , Game

“I frequently leave areas of raw, unprimed canvas unpainted [as in her painting 'Chairman of the Board', 1971].... That 'negative' space has just as active a role as the 'positive' painted space. The negative spaces maintain shapes of their own and are not empty.”

Helen Frankenthaler

Quote from 'The collection', MOMA, online 1 http://www.moma.org/collection/object.php?object_id=80139
1990s - 2000s

Painting

“It was as if I suddenly went to a foreign country but didn't know the language, but had read enough and had a passionate interest, and was eager to live there, I wanted to live in this land; I had to live there, and master the language. [reacting on Pollock's 'Black and White' paintings show in 1951; Frankenthaler saw his painting art then for the first time in her life]”

Helen Frankenthaler

Quote from Abstract Expressionism, Barbara Hess, New York, Abrams, 1971, p. 29
1970s - 1980s

Life , Art , Passion , Time

“Painting is very private and personal. There's an emotional content, but I'm more involved in the light and color and drawing of a painting. I don't set out to portray an emotion.”

Helen Frankenthaler

Quote from an interview in 'The Post', 1972; as cited in 'Helen Frankenthaler, noted abstract painter, dies at 83' https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/helen-frankenthaler-noted-abstract-painter-dies-at-83/2011/12/27/gIQAwr0dLP_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.08d9ecdb8773, Matt Schudel, December 27, 2011
1970s - 1980s

Color , Light , Drawing , Painting

“And I was painting and changing and developing and going through [c. 1950-52] that bridge from early Kandinsky and Gorky to my own [painting] thing. And just soaking up [Willem] de Kooning and [Jackson] Pollock... So I had the place to myself. And while Bill [= Willem] and Elaine [de Kooning] and Charlie [Egan] and such would maybe come to my studio, there was no thought,.... of my going in with those four or five young ones.”

Helen Frankenthaler

quote about her painting-years 1951-52
1960s, Interview with Barbara Rose', Archives - American Art, 1968

Change , Painting

“I think working on the floor [Helen started 1951-52] came from Pollock. In other words, the whole idea of all sides of pictures being possible, bottom, top, sides of the picture came from him. And the whole idea of the painting being in a sense choreographed came from him, and that once one made a move toward the canvas surface that there was a dialectic and the surface gave you an answer back, and you gave it an answer back. But that was a Pollock notion of --.... That your plans made accidents, demanded something else and then something else hinged on something else..”

Helen Frankenthaler

quote about influence of Pollock
1960s, Interview with Barbara Rose', Archives - American Art, 1968

Idea , Thinking , Sense , Painting

“The picture developed – bit by bit while I was working on it – into shapes symbolic of an exuberant figure and ladder…. therefore: 'Jacob's Ladder' [= the title of the painting she made in 1966].”

Helen Frankenthaler

Quote on the birth of a title of her art-work 'Jacob's Ladder'; from: MoMA Highlights, New York, The Museum of Modern Art, revised 2004, originally published in 1999, p. 219 http://www.moma.org/collection/object.php?object_id=78722
1990s - 2000s

Painting

“He [ Rufino Tamayo, Mexican painter] showed me how to use my first paint box [and gesturing toward an old wooden palette displayed like a prize on the wall] That's my original palette!”

Helen Frankenthaler

1970s - 1980s, interview with Deborah Salomon in 'New York Times', 1989

Painting , Box

“I admired [c. 1952-54] his [ Motherwell's] painting. But the rest of the painters I was involved with --. I mean I didn't know [Clyfford] Still either and therefore Still didn't come up in my life as much. But I liked to look at Still. And I went of course to all of his [Robert Motherwell's] shows. But Bill de Kooning and Jackson [Pollock] were all around all the time. And it wasn't just following a career and a gallery and a social scene then, and a party scene, and the peripheral part of it at all. And I knew Bob [Motherwell] not personally at all”

Helen Frankenthaler

till 1957-58
quote about several contemporary artists
1960s, Interview with Barbara Rose', Archives - American Art, 1968

Life , Time , Parting , Painting

“I've explored a variety of directions and themes over the years. But I think in my painting you can see the signature of one artist, the work of one wrist.”

Helen Frankenthaler

Quote from Abstract Expressionism, Barbara Hess, Taschen Köln, 2006, p. 15
1990s - 2000s

Thinking , Painting

“So I would say, blanket, from the time I was 17 until I was 20 [1945-48] when I graduated from Bennington [Art College] as far as painting went I had a depth analysis of what made Cubism work and its revolution, and all it opened up. And in history it was just the right moment to get it.... I did in my senior show two little pictures that are every bit as good, though I think ex post facto, nothing can be every bit as good ever - the way the best 'drip' Pollock made four years later than the best drip Pollock is not good -. But I could do Braque-s and Picasso-s that were angelic and completely understood, I mean really. I mean Paul [ [Paul Feeley ] really honored me and by that time it was a friendship, it wasn't a --. I mean our lives were in each other.”

Helen Frankenthaler

quote about her Bennington-years 1945-48
1960s, Interview with Barbara Rose', Archives - American Art, 1968

Friendship , Art , Angels , Way

“I have always been concerned with painting that simultaneously insists on a flat surface and then denies it.”

Helen Frankenthaler

Quote from 'The collection', MOMA, online 1 http://www.moma.org/collection/object.php?object_id=80139
1990s - 2000s

Painting

“I find it hard living on my own, but I imagine I would find it difficult not living on my own. Perhaps I could still change my mind. That's everyone's drama. We all make different compromises. And, no, I don't regret not having children. Given my painting, children could have suffered. A mother must make her children come first: young children are helpless. Well, paintings are objects but they're also helpless.”

Helen Frankenthaler

In 1958 (three years after breaking up with Greenberg, Frankenthaler married Robert Motherwell; their marriage ended in 1971.
1970s - 1980s, interview with Deborah Salomon in 'New York Times', 1989

Children , Imagination , Suffering , Change