How Abstract Climates Inspired Helen Frankenthaler

Helen Frankenthaler was known to be a perfectionist. She was sharp and sensitive, playful and demanding, witty, effervescent, spontaneous and loving, but only to those who truly knew her.For those who didn’t, Frankenthaler was, above all, an artist, a pioneer and a risk-taker—a flame that Jackson Pollock recognized and fanned.

In the spring of 1951, the burgeoning young artist first visited the famed Abstract Expressionist at his home and barn studio in Springs, and what she saw there unlocked groundbreaking experimentation inside her.

Standing above unprimed cotton duck unfurled on the floor, Pollock painted one composition after the other, exercising more control over his black enamel paint by using glass basting syringes, but remaining ever unbothered by the orientation of his canvas.

“I think what she took away from that was the total risk-taking,” according to Alicia G. Longwell, the Lewis B. and Dorothy Cullman chief curator at the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill, where the new exhibition “Abstract Climates: Helen Frankenthaler in Provincetown” will open Sunday.

“She was a risk-taker all her life and in her art,” she continued. “That is what she saw that day, in that studio, in the chilly Springs weather. I think that’s what really hit home with her: what you had to do as a painter, that all bets were off. You just had to go for it and do what you thought your creativity directed you to do. Imagine being in that barn, in that moment.”

The many visits that came after, and a trip to Nova Scotia, would propel Frankenthaler to create the breakthrough painting “Mountains and Sea” in the fall of 1952. Seemingly overnight, the 23-year-old’s soak-stain method introduced the color field movement and captured the imagination of the art world, putting her on the map of 20th-century art and leading her to the evolution of her years in Provincetown—the place that would become her artistic lodestar.

“‘Mountains and Sea’ became legendary, you might say, because it happened so quickly,” Ms. Longwell said. “She quite literally was in the painting, so to speak—which Pollock always said—where she was walking on it, stepping in it, or literally sitting in the painting. She said she didn’t do the painting from a drawing or a photograph. She said she brought that landscape back with her in her arms.

“It was this moment, and the surrounding publicity—she was a young painter, a female painter — where it grew to legendary proportions, because it was really the first large-scale work like that.”

While “Mountains and Sea” is not included in the upcoming show—which is co-curated by Frankenthaler’s stepdaughter, Lise Motherwell, and Helen Frankenthaler Foundation Executive Director Elizabeth Smith—“Abstract Climates” does illuminate the artist’s exploration of the relationship between landscape and abstraction, explained Parrish director Terrie Sultan.

In 2018, the exhibition was on view at the Provincetown Art Association and Museum, featuring some 30 paintings and works on paper with additional memorabilia from the artist’s life. At the Parrish, six large-scale paintings not previously included will also be on view.

“My undergraduate degree is in painting and one of the artists that I always admired was Helen Frankenthaler, and one of my goals in life was to make one that looked as good as hers,” Ms. Sultan said. “Now, I am an art museum director because I never succeeded in that goal, but I’ve always been a huge admirer of her work and I found her very inspirational to me as a coming-up artist.”

Born on December 12, 1928, in New York City, Frankenthaler was the youngest of three daughters of New York State Supreme Court Justice Alfred Frankenthaler and his wife, Martha. She studied at progressive schools and attended the opera between visits to the Guggenheim Museum and The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

She first came to Provincetown in 1950 at the suggestion of art critic Clement Greenberg, who encouraged her to study with Hans Hofmann—a natural extension of his New York school—to study Cubism and learn about his theories of empathy and his push-pull technique.

“East Hampton and Provincetown kind of vie for the oldest summer art colony,” Ms. Longwell said. “I think we always claim it, I think they do, too. It’s not a big problem, right? There’s enough to go around. They both have enormous histories in both places, so that’s what’s fun about bringing the show here—to shine a light on Frankenthaler’s history here, too.”

A year after her first summer in Provincetown, and shortly after watching Pollock at work, she was using house paint and enamel, thinned with turpentine or kerosene, pouring the mixture from an empty coffee can onto unprimed canvas.

Encountering the artist colonies of the Cape and the East End—Frankenthaler visited with Pollock until his death in 1956—she found herself drawn to the light she could find only in waterside communities like Provincetown, where she evolved from vibrant watercolors to experimentation with scale and process to fluid geometries.

“Physicists tell us the refraction of the light from the water intensifies the atmosphere. We see that here, being between the ocean and the bay,” Ms. Longwell said. “It’s really what affects the light. Many of the works, just looking through the titles, are about the beach. She had this notion of these landscapes being in her arms, in a way, that she internalized. That’s really the subtext, that she internalized these places.”

Toward the end of her life, Frankenthaler moved to the Connecticut shore, where she died in 2011 two weeks after her 83rd birthday. She lives on as a touchstone for young female artists, Ms. Longwell and Ms. Sultan agreed, and the East End is a part of that story.

“Frankenthaler is a major figure in American art and has had a lot of influence on any number of the next two generations that followed her, especially women,” Ms. Sultan said. “One of the things the Parrish is very dedicated to is making sure that our balanced program includes women artists, especially important women artists who might not be getting the attention they deserve.

“It is an ongoing project for many museums to right the wrongs of the past generations, where important women artists were not recognized,” she continued. “It’s time to change the global narrative of how value is conferred. A lot of that comes from the kinds of exhibitions that the museums present, so the public can see the work. The more we’re able to do this kind of thing—all museums, not just the Parrish—the more we’re changing the narrative.”

“Abstract Climates: Helen Frankenthaler in Provincetown” will open with a members-only reception on Sunday, August 4, at 11 a.m. at the Parrish Art Museum, located at 279 Montauk Highway in Water Mill. The show remains on view through October 27. For more information, call 631-283-2118 or visit parrishart.org.