A Little Proust and Then, Some Frankenthaler

The Helen Frankenthaler exhibit, "Drawing within Nature:  Paintings from the 1990s," was high on the list of shows I wanted to see after our return from a month in Mexico.  Within days of landing, I found myself on the way to the gallery.  I knew I was onto a good afternoon when I spotted this board outside the wonderful 10th Avenue store, 192 Books.

Whom better to walk the last few blocks to the Frankenthaler exhibit with than Proust?    I don't know that Frankenthaler read Swann's Way but I think she understood the importance of a "patch of sky above your life."  
My favorite pieces in the show illustrate Frankenthaler's understanding of the power of a person's experience of nature.

My pictures are full of climates, abstract climates, and not nature per se. But a feeling. And the feeling of an order that is associated more with nature. Nature in seasons, maybe; but nature in, well, an order. And I think art itself is order out of chaos.

—Helen Frankenthaler

And these are some of my favorite pieces in the exhibit of 12 very large paintings and 2 large scale works on paper.

The paintings are sumptuous and powerful.  They grab your attention instantly and hold it.  I did wonder about some of the colors.  The greens can sometimes be a little too harsh and "straight out of the tube" to my eye, and I doubt she anticipated that the medium she used to build up the canvas would turn that murky brown.  But those are minor concerns.  Overall, I was inspired and impressed by what Frankenthaler achieved in her studio.  Easy to imagine her standing over her completed canvases (even on her canvases, note the shoe prints in the thick paint), chin tilted up, hand on hip, and nodding an assured and determined "yes!"