Blue Jay
Helen Frankenthaler
HELEN FRANKENTHALER, 1963. OIL ON CANVAS.
“A line is a line, but is [also] a color. It does this here, but that there. The canvas surface is flat and yet the space extends for miles.” This is at the very heart of Helen Frankenthaler’s work. In every corner of the canvas, there is the opportunity for change, for deception, and for interpretation. Developing a technique known as ‘soak-staining’, whereby she loosed oil paint and allowed the natural flow of a viscous matter to guide the formal shapes of the work, Frankenthaler’s process was open to the chaos of the world. Oil paints take on the quality of watercolour, and what would once be considered mistakes become acts of deep intention. For all of its aesthetic beauty and apparent simplicity, in her hand the artwork becomes a vehicle for painterly deception. Perhaps, then, Frankenthaler is simply making explicit that which we have always known about painting; that we are willing tricked in each instance we engage with it.