| Foremost among the American Color Field | | | | tone. These variations are, in fact, hallmarks of |
| painters is Helen Frankenthaler (1928- ). | | | | Frankenthaler's works and one of the great |
| Frankenthaler's pivotal work Mountains and Sea | | | | strengths of her style. |
| (1952) is an appropriately fluid approach to both | | | | Frankenthaler's response to the problem of art's |
| abstraction and color contrast. The aquatic blues | | | | dual nature of reality and illusion often includes the |
| and greens are sometimes distinct and sometimes | | | | unmistakable landscape elements that she shares |
| partially overlapping. The irregular, organic shapes | | | | with Impressionism. More than the works of other |
| are often separated from each other by | | | | American color field painters, the works of |
| intervening canvas, and the colors are soft, | | | | Frankenthaler are likely to feature horizontal |
| muted and atmospheric. | | | | patches of color clearly reminiscent of oceans, |
| In Frankenthaler's later paintings, such as the | | | | islands, horizons, skies and even cityscapes. |
| intensely colorful Tutti Frutti (1966) and the more | | | | Frankenthaler's ties to the natural world are much |
| geometric piece entitled The Human Edge (1967), | | | | more evident than those of other color filed |
| the shapes of color touch and overlap slightly but | | | | painters. Suggestive titles such as Arcadia and |
| do not interpenetrate one another. The chromatic | | | | Eden indicate her conscious indebtedness to |
| contrasts are certainly more vivid than in the | | | | landscape art. Furthermore, the ephemeral quality |
| earlier Mountains and Sea. Although the tints in all | | | | of many of Frankenthaler's images demonstrates |
| three works are flat in a physical sense, they | | | | her awareness of the fragility of both nature (the |
| contain a multitude of variations in opacity and | | | | reality) and of artistic creativity (the illusion). |