Helen Frankenthaler - Shape Quotes

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..[from Pollock she took over] the concern with line, fluid line, calligraphy, and.... experiments with line not as line but as shape.

Helen Frankenthaler
It [the Mauve-district in the U.S.] relates to a theme which appears on-and-off, of pictures that often have one central vast shape, district, or territory; in this case, the shape itself [a square] is a play on the very shape of the canvas (quote in 1969).

Helen Frankenthaler
The picture developed – bit by bit while I was working on it – into shapes symbolic of an exuberant figure and ladder.... therefore: 'Jacob's Ladder' [the title of the painting she made in 1966].
On the birth of a title of the art-work 'Jacob's Ladder'

Helen Frankenthaler
I frequently leave areas of raw, unprimed canvas unpainted [as in her painting 'Chairman of the Board', 1971].... That 'negative' space has just as active a role as the 'positive' painted space. The negative spaces maintain shapes of their own and are not empty.

Helen Frankenthaler
I still, when I judge my own pictures (either while I'm working or after I think it's finished) determine if they work in a certain kind of space through shape or color. I think all totally abstract pictures – the best ones that really come off – Newman, Pollock, [Kenneth] Noland – have tremendous space; perspective space despite the emphasis on flat surface. For example, in Noland a band of yellow in relation to a band of blue and one of orange can move in depth although they are married to the surface. This has become a familiar explanation, but few people really see and feel it that way.... in my work, because of color and shape a lot is read in the landscape sense..

Helen Frankenthaler
I had no desire to copy Pollock. I didn't want to take a stick and dip it in a can of enamel [paint]. I needed something more liquid, watery, thinner. All my life, I have been drawn to water and translucency. I love the water; I love to swim, to watch changing seascapes. One of my favorite childhood games was to fill a sink with water and punt nail polish into to see what happened when the colors burst up the surface, merging into each other as floating, changing shapes.

Helen Frankenthaler