Famous Paintings Reviewed

Helen Frankenthaler: Mountains and Sea

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An art history blog post from Famous Paintings Reviewed.

Helen Frankenthaler (1928 - 2012) is one of only a few painters to have enjoyed unerring devotion from an art critic, especially one as powerful as New York's Clement Greenberg (1909-1994).

Greenberg, arguably the most influential art critic in the 1940s and into the 1960s, first recognized the genius of Jackson Pollock while he was still misunderstood and scorned (and inexpensive). During the 1940s, Greenberg began championing art that was completely abstract and in which the "hand" of the artist was unapparent.  

Such formalist painting arose in the 1950s in reaction to Abstract Expressionism, and was an attempt, promoted by Greenberg, to create "unemotional" art.  The painterly, gestural brushwork of abstract expressionism was supplanted by smooth canvases on which the paint was united with the surface.

Helen Frankenthaler.  Mountains and Sea, 1952.  Oil and charcoal on canvas, 7' 2 3/4" by 9' 8 1/8".  Collection of the artist on extended loan to the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D. C.

After returning from a trip to Nova Scotia in summer of 1952, Frankenthaler tacked a 7' by 10', unprimed canvas onto her studio floor (note to non-painters: a canvas is "primed" by covering it with a base layer that prevents paint from soaking into the canvas). 

Frankenthaler then blocked in some areas with charcoal, and poured diluted, thinned oil paint onto this canvas. She allowed the paint to run by tilting the canvas angle; she rubbed and blotted the paint. The thinned paint absorbed into the canvas, garnering Greenberg's exorbitant praise for the flatness, shape of field, and color in Mountains and Sea. Frankenthaler had joined nonobjective figure and ground in a novel, breathtaking manner.

Pollock also painted on the floor but used enamel paint that stood on top of the canvas when it dried; Pollock paintings were based on his bodily movements and gestures (hence the label action painter), while Frankenthaler paintings, with her more watery, moveable medium, were based on flat surface and color.  

In Mountains and Sea, one readily imagines the topography of the Cape Breton coastline, with a pyramidal shape dominating the center and meeting a sea of blue at center right.  The whiteness of the unprimed canvas evokes brilliant sunshine. The pallette of blues and pale greens hints at sky and water and forest and trees, and suggests an infinite image just partially captured on canvas.  It's pure magic, and a must-see masterpiece.

Mountains and Sea was exhibited in 1953 and received scant attention until the painters Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland visited Frankenthaler's studio. Both found in this Frankenthaler painting a new direction for modern art.  Louis commented that Mountains and Sea was "the bridge between Pollock and what was possible."  

Greenberg touted Frankenthaler's stain painting, a new way of painting which became the foundation of color field painting.  But Frankenthaler contributed more, too - she reinstated the supremacy of color, and altered the direction of abstract art.  

And by the way... she created Mountains and Sea when she was 23 years old!