Thank You, Helen Frankenthaler

Yes, painter Helen Frankenthaler did influence Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland when she perfected a technique of pouring pigment directly on canvas. This later became known as Color Field painting. She would pour turpentine-thinner paint in washes onto raw canvas so it soaked into the weave. And, yes, Helen Frankenthaler was considered a second-generation Abstract expressionist. And yes,the painting that secured her fame was "Mountains and Seas", painted in 1952 and now hangs at the National Gallery of Art.

But none of this is why I liked Helen Frankenthaler. In fact, I think the facts mentioned above don't begin to do her paintings and lithographs justice. I guess you have to bring in her marriage to Robert Motherwell, her relationship with Clement Greenberg, her upper-class background and her Bennington years and that for her first museum show Frank O'Hara wrote the catalog to create the appropriate geneaology.

But I loved her painted screens. She took a common fixture and made it a work of art. I also loved all her painting after 1980. I felt it was richer and exhibited a depth of talent missing in her earlier works. I also loved her lithographs, etchings and screen prints. In the 1970s, she reintroduced woodcuts to their former place and revolutionized the techniques of the medium.

In my view, almost all her later work surpassed her early and middle years when she was known as one of the originals, one of those who graced the studios with the great Abstract Expressionists.

This has been a hard year for losing some of my favorites--Cy Twombley, Lucien Fraud and now Helen Frankenthaler. Thank you all. You've made my life alot richer.