Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Helen Frankenthaler’S Gravity, Michael Schreyach

Michael Schreyach

Helen Frankenthaler, like other painters of her generation, was compelled to come to terms with the technical and philosophical modes of Abstract Expressionism's gestural practice. Responding to Pollock's black-and-white paintings of 1951, she evolved a technique of staining raw, unsized canvas with thinned acrylic pigments that became her hallmark and a formative influence on many other painters, including Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland. The method yielded paintings whose images appeared indivisible from their canvas grounds because colors were soaked directly into the surface. Moreover, since the technique de-emphasized the touch of the artist, it potentially renounced Abstract Expressionism's painterly gesture.