Helen Frankenthaler

(American, 1928-2011)

Mica, 1981

Footnotes

Provenance
Gallery One, Toronto
Private Collection, Michigan
Andre Emmerich Gallery, New York
Cohen Gallery, New York
Acquired directly from the above by the present owner in 1994


The painter makes something magical, spatial, and alive on a surface that is flat and with materials that are inert. That magic is what makes paintings unique and necessary. — Helen Frankenthaler


Mica (1981) is an extraordinary example of Helen Frankenthaler's masterful achievements from her mature period of the 1980s. Having remained in the same private collection since 1994, Mica exemplifies Frankenthaler's groundbreaking soak-stain technique, dotted with dynamic and organic forms rendered in a stunning color palette. Thick swatches of silver, graphite and copper sit atop soft, feathered strokes of flush pink evoking an otherworldly atmosphere. The title of the work gives the composition a second mystical layer. Not only does the name refer to the mineral group, alluding to the natural world, the title also references the Latin 'micare,' meaning 'to glitter.' A cerebral and visceral painter, Frankenthaler conjures a feeling of the sublime in Mica.

Frankenthaler's paintings from the 1980s represent a marked change in her practice – the canvas is no longer densely painted, but lighter and more diluted. Crucially, it represents the introduction of impasto 'blobs' or 'clumps', which were terms Frankenthaler used to describe her technique. Set against a smoky pink backdrop, bold metallic clumps interrupt the surface, with bursts of electric blue and yellow, warm gold, orange and red, creating a light-infused brilliancy that seems to spring from within the canvas. A creamy white band stretches across the lower register, with a bold splash of graphite, the result of paint poured forcefully onto the canvas. The vivid spots of color float on the surface, seemingly arising from a receding background.

These spatial ambiguities and the interaction between color fields, were carefully directed by Frankenthaler. She achieved this sense of immediacy and finality, through repeated effort. Frankenthaler remarked: "A really good picture looks as if it's happened at once...one really beautiful wrist motion that is synchronized with your head and your heart, and you have it, and therefore it looks as if it were born in a minute" (the artist in Barbara Rose, Frankenthaler, New York 1972, p. 85).

Frankenthaler painted in the process of continual discovery. The opacity of color in Mica is guided toward creating a sensuous effect, a composition that recalls the emotion of a time or place without physically replicating its surroundings. Invoking the soak-stain method she pioneered in the 1950s, Frankenthaler thinned-down her pigments, soaking streams of color directly onto the surface of the raw, unprimed canvas. The subtle pink background is darker in some areas and lighter in others, with the varying opacity determined by the thickness of Frankenthaler's application of paint. This creates a diaphanous network of color which, coupled with the vivid splashes of paint, leads the viewer's eye in a dance across the surface. Departing from the dramatic brushstrokes of the first generation of Abstract Expressionism, Frankenthaler chose to emphasize the flat surface of the canvas itself over the effort to use the surface to construct an illusion of depth and, in doing so, she compelled the viewer to appreciate the very nature of paint on canvas.

Frankenthaler's work became an essential bridge between Abstract Expressionism and Minimalism, offering a new way to define and use color for those artists who came after her. Frankenthaler's soak-stain technique was soon adopted by other artists, notably Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland, and launched the second generation of the Color Field school of painting. Louis famously remarked that Frankenthaler was "a bridge between Pollock and what was possible" (M. Louis, quoted by E. Gibson in "Pushing Past Abstraction," Wall Street Journal, 27 December 2011).

Mica is a summation of her mature technique and overriding aesthetic vision. The bold washes of color and gestural lines which Frankenthaler imbues across the canvas speak to her lifelong pursuit of defining her own artistic path within the male-dominated world of Abstract Expressionism.