A Page From A Book III 1997

Helen Frankenthaler made this color etching, A Page From A Book III, on paper, sometime in her career. The marks are floaty and blobby, they run and bleed a little, which gives the whole thing a sense of process and chance. The left side is anchored by a bold field of pink, full of streaks and drips, while the right is darker, more opaque, and the colors are muddier. There’s this loose yellow line floating above the block of color, almost cartoonish, which is a nice contrast to the seriousness of the abstraction. Check out the way the blues and grays almost suggest a landscape, or maybe just a feeling of space. I think of Joan Mitchell when I look at this, another painter who knew how to let color sing and how to make a painting feel both deliberate and totally free. What does it make you think of?