Thresholds: 1980s

Entering middle age is a rite of passage for anyone. For an artist like Helen Frankenthaler, crossing the threshold of midlife meant confronting new realities. She knew that maintaining a presence in New York to see others’ art and to conduct business was important. She also knew that spending more time away from the city, close to the water, was not only calming but essential. It was a question of balance, and she found ways to have both, painting all the while.

Frankenthaler’s respect for the history of art, nurtured early on in Paul Feeley’s studio art classes at Bennington College, never ceased. From Paleolithic caves to Monet’s late water lilies, she continually drew from art of the ages, and during the late 1970s and 1980s found renewed inspiration in paintings by Titian, Velasquez, Manet, and Rembrandt. Scrutinizing abstract details in old master paintings (a soiled shirt or voluminous gown) enabled Frankenthaler to cross a technical threshold into a tonal world of diaphanous veils, tinted grounds, subtle washes, and transparencies. She discovered another kind of space and light and brought these to bear in works like Eastern Light (1982), Cathedral (1982), Madrid (1984), and Star Gazing (1989).