At the suddenly-everywhere A Hug From The Art World, the equally-suddenly-everywhere Francine Tint exhibits recent paintings in Open Color.
The gallery, at 515 W 19th St., is a charming two-story brownstone with an open door beckoning visitors into the space, with an upstairs component. I'm starting there with works on paper.
The green work on left is one of a dozen or so color explorations made from vividly hued, singular pours. The space they inhabit is welcoming: you can peruse the exhibition catalog and view the work in quiet.
Downstairs, two horizontal walls flank each other, framing these large works within. The ceilings are low, the room almost a passageway, albeit a beautiful one. Consequently the paintings are hung unusually low, inviting more intimate encounters with the liquid brushstrokes.
A penchant for pouring reminiscent of the "Tenth Street Touch" or Hole's legendary line in the 1994 song Rock Star, "they even f* the same," has struck New York. There are advantages in that, through repetition we modulate variation, and this may be the time when diverse strains of paint application previously kept separate now coalesce into more complex and contemporary viewpoints.
Yet Tint has been a committed abstract painter for the duration of her long career, recognized as a stylist in the fashion and rock worlds, so the abandon and wildness in the work are fully realized.
Her paintings are filled with rhythm as if poured from containers (they are; it's on film), then dry brushed across and swiped clean in a final, bravado gesture. Clots of paint dot bare canvas interstices. The landscape implication by format, orientation, and pattern recognition remains cipher-like despite conjuring multiple interpretations.
Don't miss it! On through June.
Helen Frankenthaler's Alassio, 1960, oil on linen, 85.25x131 inches, in the tour de force The Moment and The Distance at Gagosian on 21st St. This survey coalesces early and late work, showing for the first time the painter's shift toward denser paint application later on.
Gamut, 1968, 134 x 93 inches, after Frankenthaler's switch to acrylic. The space in this painting is akin to the desert that inspired it: vivid, perfect, spare, yet full.
Auguste, 1977, 96 x 108 inches - where things get interesting as Frankenthaler accumulates layers and density. These late paintings, some of which I saw in the 2021 Palm Springs Museum show, are a real surprise, revealing shifts and expansions normally suppressed in the Color Field narrative. Let us not forget that Pollock presented her point of departure. She returns to texture, combining the momentary disturbance in poured distance, forcing us to locate ourselves in abstraction.
Hint from Bassano, 1973, 85 x 277 inches
Classic Color Field
A Green Thought in a Green Shade, 1981, 119 x 156.5 inches, my personal favorite. It featured in Frankenthaler's 2008 New York solo exhibition at Knoedler & Co., Frankenthaler at Eighty, which I visited on a snowy day and first recognized the moment/distance relationship.
Details from close to; the color gets neutral at this proximity, but some of it is the camera.
Beautiful silvers and umbers
Code Blue, 1980, Acrylic on canvas, 79.25 x 170.25 inches (with a yellow filter)
Similar to A Green Thought in a Green Shade, Code Blue has innumerable painterly incidents within its pours and hints toward the denser textures to come already present in Auguste.
Eastern Light, 1982, acrylic on canvas, 69 x 118.5 inches. The shifting and variation in Frankenthaler's process revealing more complexity than a coherent, linear narrative. We see an imprimatur nonetheless: every painter leaves her mark.
Cathedral, 1982, acrylic on canvas, 70-5/8 x 120 inches
Shippan October, 1981, Acrylic on canvas, 47.25 x 136 inches
Borrowed Dream, 1992, Acrylic on canvas, 84.5 x 108.5 inches. In the 1990s Frankenthaler gets wild, layering and then combing through to the transparency. Maybe she or her dealers were horrified at the time, who knows? but these look great, contemporary, and brave.
Yin Yang, 1990, Acrylic on canvas, 57.5 x 112 inches. Saw this in Palm Springs in 2021 as well. So excited by the wrestling with known and unknown space, that an artist of her caliber and station dug so hard into the unknown through her life.
