Helen Frankenthaler - Work Quotes

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I've explored a variety of directions and themes over the years. But I think in my painting you can see the signature of one artist, the work of one wrist.

Helen Frankenthaler
After the first day there [In 1961, at the invitation of Tatyana Grosman, Frankenthaler ventured out to Universal Limited Art Editions (ULAE), Grosman's Long Island printmaking studio, and began making lithographs for the first time] I felt no hesitation. I was very committed. All I had to do was start work on that print. It was a whole new road - and a very connected road.

Helen Frankenthaler
A really good picture looks as if it's happened at once. It's an immediate image. For my own work, when a picture looks labored and overworked, and you can read in it as well - she did this and then she did that; there is something in it that has not got to do with beautiful art to me. And I usually throw these out, though I think very often it takes ten of those over-labored efforts to produce one really beautiful wrist motion that is synchronized with your head and heart, and you have it, and therefore it looks as if it were born in a minute.

Helen Frankenthaler
Now I work on waist-high enormous tabletops. I no longer stoop to conquer.

Helen Frankenthaler
I used to be much more shy of the word 'landscape' applied to my work. I mind that less now.

Helen Frankenthaler
With any picture, on paper or on canvas, the main idea is: does it work? Is it beautiful? People seem to feel that canvas is more 'serious' than paper, more desirable.

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