Helen Frankenthaler at MOMA

                 

                [Jacob's Ladder (1957)]

Opening paragraph of last month's New Yorker review:

"'Helen Frankenthaler: A Grand Sweep,' at the Museum of Modern Art, is a masterpieces-only spritz of an exhibition. It features five paintings by five different artists named Helen Frankenthaler. They were all raised on Park Avenue, educated at Bennington College, and classified as second-generation Abstract Expressionists, but I have trouble seeing them as one and the same. The five pieces offer, in turn, biomorphic hints of de Kooning, the ragged shapes of Clyfford Still, the bold geometries of Ellsworth Kelly, the paint smears of Gerhard Richter, and something that looks like toothpaste squeezed onto an orange peel. The organizing force behind them, if you can spot it, has a wily mind and a preternatural gift for dispatching cliché from the canvas. After 1952, I don't know if Frankenthaler could have painted a cliché if she tried."

The show will remain up through February 8, 2026.

      

                                      [Mauve District (1966)]

                  

                                                

                                           [Commune (1969)]

                               [Chairman of the Board (1971)]

Can't make it?

  

         

                       

                      [Toward Dark (1988)]

A curator's guide to the exibition is here.