Tag Archives: Morris Louis

Helen Frankenthaler, 1928-2011

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Helen Frankenthaler, Canyon, 1965. Acrylic on canvas, 44 x 52 in. The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C. The Dreier Fund for Acquisitions and funds given by Gifford Phillips, 2001.

Abstract painter Helen Frankenthaler has died in Connecticut at the age of 83. Her painting, Canyon, 1965, is a favorite here at the Phillips and often on display. The canvas is stained by rich pools of poured paint, a method that would be adopted by other fellow members of the abstract expressionist movement. During a powerfully inspirational visit to Frankenthaler’s New York studio in April of 1953, Morris Louis and Kenneth Noland saw her painting Mountains and Sea (1952) and were deeply moved by her inventive use of color and paint, bringing back techniques that would serve as the foundation of the Washington Color School painters. As quoted in Gerald Nordland’s essay, “Washington Color Painters: the first generation,” Louis said, “[Frankenthaler] showed us a way to think about and use color . . . She was a bridge between [Jackson] Pollock and what was possible.”

Louis the Illusionist?

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A visitor with Morris Louis's Seal, 1959. Photo: Katie Schuler

The great mid-century critic, Clement Greenberg, praised Morris Louis’s paintings for being “purely optical experience[s].” For Greenberg, Louis’s paintings were the pinnacle of abstraction: a celebration of the essential flatness of the canvas and primacy of color and devoid of any references to the real world.  But, fifty years on, it is hard to limit oneself to such narrow praise of these lyrically beautiful paintings.  Louis may not have used line to “draw” in the traditional sense, but he was a master at layering paints and manipulating the pours of color so as to create illusionistic spaces and objects. When describing his paintings, we almost always reach for language that refers to things that are tangible, even sculptural: curtains, caves, mountains, pillars . . .

Louis’s works highlight the arbitrariness of pigeonholing paintings or artists as being either “abstract” or “representational.” These works succeed in both worlds.

-Michèle Pollak, Gallery Educator

Discovering the World of Art Outside the Dome: Congressional Interns Respond to the Phillips

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Last month, former foster youth who have spent the summer interning for Congress through the Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute and the Sara Start Fund came to the Phillips for lunch and a tour. Intern Derrick Riggins shares his impressions in prose, while intern and photographer Linda Lee Zambito provides snapshots from the visit.  

 

The 2011 Class of Foster Youth Interns explore the Phillips. Photo: Linda Lee Zambito, Congressional intern and participant in Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute Foster Youth Internship program

On July 16, The Phillips Collection blessed me as well as several other interns with a tour of its permanent collection. We all had a truly good time, but this was my first time really paying attention to the artwork and learning its history. Continue reading →