Skywriting 1997

Curator: Helen Frankenthaler’s "Skywriting," from 1997. She’s working here with acrylic stain on paper, pushing abstraction towards the atmospheric. What are your initial thoughts? Editor: Lightness, definitely. It's airy, dreamy even. It feels like looking up at clouds shifting and dissolving – almost more a memory of a landscape than a representation. Curator: The ‘stain’ technique really helps with that. Frankenthaler poured diluted paint onto unprimed canvas – or in this case paper. This allows the color to soak directly into the material. She was quite radical because she removed the artist’s hand that way. No brushwork, just pure color melding into the surface. Editor: And I can sense that removal. There's this fantastic push and pull between control and accident, you know? The color's intentional, but the edges... the way it bleeds? Beautiful! And what about that band of green at the top? Like a hazy horizon line. Curator: Absolutely! Although working on the floor made all over her art accessible and unified and challenged hierarchical structures within art-making and society, there's this tension within her method, because even accidental art, spontaneous in nature, needs a set of systems in place. Editor: It’s interesting you point that out, since that very “organized chaos” is precisely why I'm drawn in. What might look simple reveals so much deliberation if we look closely. It really is just… nice to spend time in the landscape created here. Curator: Indeed, there's a deceptive complexity here, layering abstract expressionist sensibilities with those very deliberate decisions about composition and material, and her approach greatly affected later generations of painters. Editor: So true! Okay, I am feeling sufficiently elevated by the “skywriting” here today…a fresh new appreciation, ready for what's next! Curator: A perfectly insightful journey through a remarkable and impactful artwork.