SchoolArts - May/June 2010

Make a large color photocopy of Madridscape and mount it on cardboard. Using a paper cutter, divide the painting into rectangles or squares of equal size. Ask students to reassemble the artwork as a puzzle, being attentive to shape, color, and texture. You might want to make several puzzles. Cut larger squares for younger students and smaller squares for older students. Classroom Activities

Elementary

• The paint varies in density. Some painted areas

• The weave of the cloth is clearly visible, even through the paint.

• The paint has stained the unprimed canvas.

Moving closer to the painting, you can study Frankenthaler’s soak-stain technique:

• Some shapes are big and bold, requiring large sweeps of Frankenthaler’s arm; other shapes are delicate and fragile, produced, perhaps, by a flick of her wrist.

• The main colors (blue, black, red, green, and gold) are repeated throughout the canvas.

• There are large areas of white, unpainted canvas. These areas don’t really function as background because they become interesting shapes in their own right.

Madridscape is a large painting, too tall to fit into an average room with eight-foot ceilings. To view the painting whole, you have to stand well back from the gallery wall. Here’s what you might notice from that distance:

About the Artwork

Middle School Make color photocopies of Madridscape and cut each photocopy into eight vertical strips, so that each strip has its own distinct visual character. Give each student a strip and a blank piece of paper. After pasting the strip somewhere on the paper, each student should use his or her strip as a point of departure for an entirely new painted composition. As you compare the finished products, discuss how each student has chosen to expand on some aspect of Frankenthaler’s imagery.

Find areas where Frankenthaler pushed her paint around with a brush or sponge; tilted her canvas to let the paint drip; flicked her brush to cause the

Easy

Discussion

Surprise is an important aspect of
Frankenthaler’s creative process.
Even if she starts with a clear
idea in her mind’s eye, she cannot
completely control the colors that
she pours onto the canvas.

• Some colors are layered over other colors.

• Many shapes are outlined with a thinly colored
“halo” that blurs their edge. The “halo” is the
oily mark left by turpentine
that has separated from the
pigment.

If you stand just inches
away from the painting,
you can immerse yourself
in even smaller sections
of canvas. One area might
remind you of small bits of
confetti, while another part
might make you feel that you are witness to an
explosion. The drips in the lower left might suggest
a gentle rain shower, while other areas invite you
to imagine the artist’s actions as she smeared, spat-
tered, or poured her paint.

appear opaque; others look watery thin. The tall black shape at right has patches of dense black on top of a much thinner wash.

In 1953, an artist named Morris Louis visited Helen Frankenthaler’s New York studio and was greatly impressed by her stain paintings. Afterwards, he too began thinning his paint and pouring it onto unprimed canvas to develop his own distinctive style. Compare the work of Frankenthaler and Louis to see how a single technique can be used to produce work that is fundamentally different in style.

High School

SchoolArts May/June 2010

www.hummingbirdfilms.com/helenfrankenthaler.

html www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsoaxUcwp3s

Linda Andre is manager of teacher programs and resources and holds the Sylvia Friedberg Nachlas

Endowed Chair for Museum Education at the Baltimore Museum of Art.

Frankenthaler does not consider the unpainted areas of her paintings as background. How has the artist made the white, unpainted areas of her composition appear active rather than empty?

Challenging

This painting is clearly not a realistic cityscape of Madrid, but it might contain a reference to what Frankenthaler saw while visiting the city. In the very center, there is a blue rectangle with a triangular spike on top. Visit en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Plaza_Mayor,_Madrid to see a photograph of the Casa de la Panadería on the Plaza Mayor, Madrid’s central plaza. Do you think Frankenthaler’s blue shape was intentional or coincidental? Explain your reasons.