Connected by Joy

Description

Helen Frankenthaler
United States, 1928–2011
Connected by Joy
1969–73
Aquatint and etching
Museum purchase, 1974/1.257
(Flip Your Field: Abstract Art from the Collection, June 9 – September 2, 2012, text by Celeste Brusati)
Following her graduation from Bennington College in 1949, Helen Frankenthaler returned to her native New York just as the first generation of New York School artists was gaining acclaim. Among this group, it was Jackson Pollock whose revolutionary approach to the handling of materials had the most profound effect on the direction Frankenthaler would take with her own art. Incorporating the individualism and experimentation championed by the Abstract Expressionists, she helped to redefine the relationship between medium and support. She poured diluted oil paint directly onto unprimed and highly absorbent canvas, which caused the pigment to soak into the support, resulting in large, unstructured planes of color. She quickly gained prominence in the early 1950s with this new technique of stain painting and was soon joined by fellow artists Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland. They became a second generation of the New York School, known as the Color Field painters.
Frankenthaler began printmaking in the 1960s, starting with lithography and continuing with etching, monoprint, screenprint, and woodcut. Her prints share with her paintings a love of color and contrast, deftly paired in virtually seamless compositions. In Connected by Joy Frankenthaler’s floating biomorphic shapes connected by threads of primary colors appear to vibrate and dance upon the picture plane. True to Frankenthaler’s tone, this work communicates, through both palette and form, a feeling of the contagious exuberance of joy.
Katie Weiss, Research Assistant, on the occasion of the exhibition The New York School: Abstract Expressionism and Beyond and Beyond, July 20, 2002 – January 19, 2003
Helen Frankenthaler
United States, 1928–2011
Connected by Joy
1969–73
Aquatint and etching
Museum purchase, 1974/1.257