Helen Frankenthaler

André Emmerich Gallery, Inc., New York
Acquired by the present owner from the above in January 1975

This work is in very good condition overall. There are scattered faint brown accretions predominately visible in the unpainted areas and in the extreme right portion of the painting. Under ultraviolet light inspection, there is no evidence of restoration. Unframed.
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Leveling from 1973 is a breath-taking example of Helen Frankenthaler's 1970s Color Field canvases. The stunning mélange of paint in a range of prismatic hues offers such visual opulence that marks this large canvas as among the artist's finest paintings of the 1970s. Evident in this work is Frankenthaler's signature technique of thinning her paint out so that it elegantly stains the surface, allowing the viewer to glimpse the woven texture of the canvas. To achieve this soak-stain effect, Frankenthaler would mix house paint, enamel, tube oil paints, and either turpentine or kerosene. 

Frankenthaler was not the first artist to water-down her paint; indeed, such predecessors as Wasily Kandinsky, Joan Mirò, and Arshile Gorky all implemented this practice to achieve a similar effect. Frankenthaler also found inspiration from Paul Cézanne's watercolors, which achieved a lightness that Frankenthaler greatly admired. Starting in the 1950s, Frankenthaler's canvases began to achieve a similar lightness, a kind of openness that allowed the canvas to breathe. Frankenthaler would often leave patches or strips of the canvas bare and unpainted, which, in the words of John Elderfield, "colonized emptiness." (John Elderfield, Helen Frankenthaler exhibition catalogue, MoMA, 1997). Though Frankenthaler adapted the staining technique from those who preceded her, it is she who should be credited with fully exploring the capabilities and boundaries that the process allowed. 

In the 1970s, Frankenthaler's Color Field paintings developed a new sumptuousness and sensuality, characterized in Leveling's luscious color and soft, bleeding forms. The color palette perhaps even pays tribute to Georgia O'Keeffe's organic, voluptuous botanical paintings, like Flower Abstraction from 1924. The horizontality and divisions of colors seems to evoke a landscape scene. Even the title of the painting suggests landscape, as one definition of the word is a "parallel plane of the horizon." In fact, "leveling" is also a product that is used to thin out paint, with which Frankenthaler undoubtedly would be familiar from her soak-stain technique. As a whole, Leveling has an elegant femininity and delicate technical handling that produces bold and powerful visual composition.