Dissolution and structure

On Life in the West, Part One

This is only Part One of “Life in the West” because I am an ardent lover of the West, and although there are no specific plans for Part Two or Three, etc., I can confirm they most certainly will exist. So, let’s get into it.

The selection for today is Viewpoint I, 1974, by Helen Frankenthaler. This painting is almost certainly an absurd choice for dialogue on the West. Perhaps a landscape photograph of rolling hills of saguaros or a painting of a cowboy dressed in fringed chaps on a white mare would’ve sufficed, would’ve been a more reasonable choice. One where the argument would be obvious; the symbolism direct. But we’re looking at this abstract expressionistic painting because the point of this newsletter is not to be weekly art history tidbits about particular movements or styles. It’s about the derivatives that spur the art. We’re putting the art in question, not questioning art itself.

This work doesn’t quite reach a Rothko-level of expressionism as it still holds intelligible figuration. Frankenthaler’s bands of colors plainly nod to landscapes, much like the numerous Georgia O’Keeffe watercolors of Ghost Ranch in Northern New Mexico. But unlike her other works, in Frankenthaler’s Viewpoint I, a blurred structure is placed on the horizon. Light reflects off of unsettled dust, diffusing into an inky night sky. The dabs and strokes of color form a suggestion of a thoroughly modern establishment you might find off a desert highway: a gas station, diner, or information center. It’s where a blur of lights shines from a great distance, and you can only hope you’ll find what you need once you get there.

In the early 1950s, Frankenthaler first began to forge paths in color field painting and said, “there are no rules…that is how art is born, that is how breakthroughs happen. Go against the rules or ignore the rules; that is what invention is about.” Separate from gestural works, these capture particular atmospheres with minimal detail.

The large swaths of paint-soaked canvas establish consistency, a distilled subject matter. Viewpoint I, not quite an all-over painting — meaning, the main substance of this image does not bleed to the border of the canvas — like in other works she and many of her contemporaries produced, the viewer gets the sense of being within Frankenthaler’s world. We look from the unceasing expanse toward something which we’re tethered to for civilization and sanity.

Viewpoint I is smaller than much of her work on canvas but is still more than five by seven feet. Frankenthaler would paint on the floor and walk about the canvas — she described the process as a dance. In footage from 1984, the artist washed her canvases with large, paint-soaked sponges on poles, which she pushed across the surfaces. Of working on the floor rather than an easel, in 1993, she said, “instead of dealing head-on with four sides and four corners, you felt the boundaries of the canvas — the scale of it — were endless; that thrust of shoulder as compared to wrist alone.”

The scale of the painting envelops you in its deconstructed reality with its selective focus — not on the vastness of the land but coming from it. The work shifts toward the obsession with wanting something reliable to adhere to.

This painting tries to make sense of a moment difficult to articulate. It’s a visceral experience of unknowing, abstracting not one particular object or idea. The beauty of the West, in part, is the reluctance we all have to figure it out. And we encourage each other to let the questions remain.

Disillusionment, disassociation, disfiguration: the desert is an undoing for humans. Either from the heat, dry air, or lack of water, we hear of the trance-like states it induces time and time again. Convection currents distort air and demand you question your perception of reality in heat shimmers. You incessantly wonder where and when to stop and if you’ll make it the 70 miles to the next gas station. I suppose the constant wondering leaves you on the verge of delirium. To be endlessly asking the single question will I make it, and knowing full well in your rational mind that breakdowns, blowouts, and haboobs are not as frequent as you think, does leave you slightly insane. But, once you allow yourself to let the uncertainties fall away by trusting your preparedness, you can appreciate the disillusionment of the desert. The rhythm of the city slips away, almost to be lost. But you begin to find solace in the quiet whirr and hum of the natural elements. Wind, dust showering your car window or outer shell, tumbleweed scratching as it blows across your path, the silence of thousands of Cloudless Sulphur butterfly wings flapping as they migrate. This is Viewpoint I.

“For more than 30 years, Helen Frankenthaler has been creating paintings that walk a tightrope between spontaneity and self-consciousness, improvisation and deliberation, dissolution and structure,” Michael Brenson wrote in the Times in 1983.

From the disillusioned viewpoint, we reach for the most wanted, most needed structure. We remain tethered to others and rejoin at these highway stops and Main Streets of the almost-abandoned railroad and mining towns. Depend always on something coming along to balance the depth of self. And when the structure in the distance comes into view, feel a calmness wash over you.

Part of the key to artworks of this style is seeing them in person, as only then can their scale, texture, and the magnitude of their presence be appreciated. The feeling of floating is not fully perceptible in a digital image, no matter how advanced your liquid retina screen may be. I’m telling you this not to have you rush to the web archives of your nearest metropolitan museum in search of Frankenthalers on view, of course. (But I did. To my knowledge, none of her works are on view in Dallas. Six sit in storage.)