Poet Barbara Guest praised her friend Helen Frankenthaler’s work for embodying opposing qualities of “freedom with restraint, extravagance with discipline, suggestion and definition” saying that in Frankenthaler’s work, “the moment becomes the distance.” The phrase is the title of a museum-quality exhibition of Frankenthaler’s work at Gagosian Gallery’s 21st Street location which tracks her stylistic development from the 1960s through the 1990s. These two large canvases from the late ‘60s at the show’s entrance engulf viewers in fields of color that are both washy and firm and recall Frankenthaler’s stated intention to paint “climates,” hinting at moods conjured by changing natural conditions. (On view through July 2nd).
