Similitudes: Frankenthaler and Caro at Yares

Welcome to Similitudes at Yares, featuring prime Anthony Caro and Helen Frankenthaler works. Caro and Frankenthaler were fast friends, visiting and even working in each others' studios. The linked exhibition title shows fantastic install shots with proper color. 

 I relate to Frankenthaler's attempt for effortlessness. The quote gives courage.

Straight ahead from entry to right; desk in first image on left. These paintings are shockingly contemporary. They look great with the sculpture, like natural landscapes filtered through industrial parks.

Into the first room. Sculptures cohabiting with paintings, informing each other, establishing moods. Wonderful to see in tandem with the Gagosian show, which follows a similar trajectory with the large oil soak stain paintings moving into acrylic veils and raised texture.

A detour down the hall in the old Mary Boone space for a tour de force painting in the back room akin to Borrowed Dream, 1992, in the Gagosian show. The painting combines multitudinous methods and perspectives while evincing a landscape out the window as if the wall were invisible. Geometry and grit undermine the color.

The application of heavy, combed paint emerges in the late 1980s as both shows make clear.

Tableaux ~ here, in the old Boone space.

This painting pours a heavy line to demarcate almost narrative space. But she holds back, ensuring the pours do heavy lifting--or rather our taking the time to decode and accept the full image despite the toggle between applications. As if the soak stain saturation is a space deconstructed by foreground and background. This work recalls Matisse's 1905 Joy of Life (Le Bonheur de Vivre) in the Barnes Collection.

A related painting, a real beauty, bringing the light and heavy applications together.

Caro summons early Brancusi's Woman With Her Throat Cut in several of his works. He is a worthy partner to Frankenthaler. These are major artists, and this show is deeply inspiring.