Helen Frankenthaler Quotes and Sayings - Page 1
-
“There are no rules. That is how art is born, how breakthroughs happen. Go against the rules or ignore the rules. That is what invention is about.”
-- Helen Frankenthaler -
“Art has a will of its own. It has nothing to do with the taste of the moment or what's expected of you. That's a formula for dead art, or fashionable art.”
-- Helen Frankenthaler -
“A really good picture looks as if it's happened at once. It's an immediate image.”
-- Helen FrankenthalerSource : Helen Frankenthaler, Barbara Rose (1970*). “Frankenthaler”
-
“You have to know how to use the accident, how to recognise it, how to control it, and ways to eliminate it so that the whole surface looks felt and born all at once.”
-- Helen Frankenthaler -
-
“There are no rules. Let the picture lead you where it must go.”
-- Helen FrankenthalerSource : "ART/ARCHITECTURE; Helen Frankenthaler, Back to the Future" by Ted Loos, www.nytimes.com. April 27, 2003.
-
“A really good picture looks as if it's happened at once. It's an immediate image. For my own work, when a picture looks labored and overworked, and you can read in it—well, she did this and then she did that, and then she did that—there is something in it that has not got to do with beautiful art to me. And I usually throw these out, though I think very often it takes ten of those over-labored efforts to produce one really beautiful wrist motion that is synchronized with your head and heart, and you have it, and therefore it looks as if it were born in a minute.”
-- Helen Frankenthaler -
“What has made it work, or what makes certain paintings successful or not, has to do with my being a painter and a thinking, feeling person, more than my sex, color, height, origin.”
-- Helen Frankenthaler -
“The price for living the life I have -- for any serious, devoted person, is that at times one must live alone, or feel alone. I think loneliness is associated in many people's minds when they think about success.”
-- Helen Frankenthaler -
-
“I wanted things that I couldn't at times articulate.”
-- Helen Frankenthaler -
“I've explored a variety of directions and themes over the years. But I think in my painting you can see the signature of one artist, the work of one wrist.”
-- Helen FrankenthalerSource : "Abstract Expressionism". Book by Barbara Hess, 2005.
-
“I have always been concerned with painting that simultaneously insists on a flat surface and then denies it.”
-- Helen Frankenthaler -
“I follow the rules until I go against them all.”
-- Helen FrankenthalerSource : 1993 On translating her large, lyrical abstracts from paintings to prints. In the Washington Times, 16 Apr.
-
-
“A picture that is beautiful, or that comes off, or that works, looks as if it was all made at one stroke.”
-- Helen FrankenthalerSource : 1972 Quoted in Ian Crofton (ed) A Dictionary of Art Quotations (1988).
-
“I had the landscape in my arms as I painted it. I had the landscape in my mind and shoulder and wrist.”
-- Helen Frankenthaler -
“There are many accidents that are nothing but accidents-and forget it. But there are some that were brought about only because you are the person you are... you have the wherewithal, intelligence, and energy to recognize it and do something with it.”
-- Helen Frankenthaler -
“I don't start with a color order, but find the colors as I go.”
-- Helen Frankenthaler -
-
“I don't resent being a female painter. I don't exploit it. I paint.”
-- Helen FrankenthalerSource : "Helen Frankenthaler, Abstract Painter Who Shaped a Movement, Dies at 83" by Grace Glueck, www.nytimes.com. December 27, 2011.
-
“I'd rather risk an ugly surprise than rely on things I know I can do.”
-- Helen FrankenthalerSource : Helen Frankenthaler, Barbara Rose (1970*). “Frankenthaler”
-
“Every canvas is a journey all its own.”
-- Helen Frankenthaler -
“What concerns me when I work, is not whether the picture is a landscape, or whether it's pastoral, or whether somebody will see a sunset in it. What concerns me is - did I make a beautiful picture?”
-- Helen FrankenthalerSource : "Artful Survivor". Interview with Deborah Salomon, www.nytimes.com. May 14, 1989.
-
-
“Every so often every artist feels, 'I'll never paint again. The muse has gone out the window.' In 1985, I hardly painted at all for three months, and it was agonizing. I looked at reproductions. I stared at Matisse. I stared at the Old Masters. I stared at the Quattrocento. And I thought to myself - Don't push it! If you try too hard to get at something, you almost push it away.”
-- Helen FrankenthalerSource : "Artful Survivor". Interview with Deborah Salomon, www.nytimes.com. May 14, 1989.
-
“Whatever the medium, there is the difficulty, challenge, fascination and often productive clumsiness of learning a new method: the wonderful puzzles and problems of translating with new materials.”
-- Helen FrankenthalerSource : Helen Frankenthaler, Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute (1980). “Helen Frankenthaler prints, 1961-1979”, HarperCollins
-
“We would sift through every inch of what it was that worked, or if it didn't, and wonder what was effective in it, in terms of paint, the subject matter, the size, the drawing.”
-- Helen Frankenthaler -
“The question of sex will take care of itself.”
-- Helen Frankenthaler -
-
“One really beautiful wrist motion, that is synchronised with your head and heart, and you have it. It looks as if it were born in a minute.”
-- Helen Frankenthaler
You may also like:
-
Adolph Gottlieb
Painter -
Barnett Newman
Artist -
Clement Greenberg
Essayist -
Cy Twombly
Painter -
Elaine de Kooning
Painter -
Frank Stella
Painter -
Franz Kline
Painter -
Hans Hofmann
Painter -
Jackson Pollock
Artist -
Jasper Johns
Artist -
Jim Dine
Artist -
Joan Mitchell
Painter -
Kenneth Noland
Painter -
Lee Krasner
Artist -
Mark Rothko
Artist -
Richard Diebenkorn
Painter -
Robert Motherwell
Painter -
Robert Rauschenberg
Painter -
Sam Francis
Painter -
Willem de Kooning
Artist