Sanguine Mood 1971

Here’s Frankenthaler’s ‘Sanguine Mood’, made with paint on paper. The color palette is pretty muted, and she's using these washes of thin paint, almost staining the paper itself. It’s like she's letting the materials do their thing, and embracing the unexpected. Looking closely, you can see where the paint has bled a little at the edges of the salmon color on the right, creating these soft, blurry boundaries. This feels really intimate, like she's inviting us into her process. And then, there's that single, almost shocking line of bright red paint that really jumps out against the muted background. It cuts through the image like a bolt of lightning, adding this raw emotional charge to the work. Frankenthaler was always experimenting, and you can see how her work opened doors for later artists, like Pat Steir, who used dripping and layering to create these crazy, beautiful paintings. It’s like they're all part of this ongoing conversation, bouncing ideas off each other across time.