An up to date version of John Elderfield’s Frankenthaler, initially printed in 1989 and which many think about to be the definitive monograph on the artist, might be launched this month by Gagosian, in collaboration with Helen Frankenthaler Basis.
The revised model covers everything of Helen Frankenthaler’s profession with freshly added chapters that target her late-Nineteen Fifties to early-Sixties works and her profession from 1988 to 2002, each of which have been lacking from the unique model. That includes over 300 full-color reproductions, together with beforehand unpublished works, in addition to greater than 100 documentary images and comparative illustrations. the monograph gives complete visible and scholarly perception into Frankenthaler’s profession.
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Among the many extra attention-grabbing anecdotes included within the re-creation is Elderfield’s recollection of how Frankenthaler got here into his life, which concerned no small quantity of chutzpah on the a part of the artist. Shortly after the opening of “The Wild Beasts: Fauvism and Its Affinities,” Elderfield’s first exhibition as a curator on the Museum of Trendy Artwork, Frankenthaler left him a notice on the museum’s data desk.
“They’re throwing me out,” the notice learn. “I can’t keep any longer. 9 pm alas. It is a fan notice swiftly left on the desk to say, your Fauve present is nice, inspiring, crucial (underlined 4 occasions). Preserve going sturdy.”
When requested how that notice sparked a collaboration that in the end led to the Frankenthaler the monograph, Elderfield mentioned Frankenthaler unabashedly adopted up just a few days afterward the cellphone asking if he’d gotten her notice. After he replied within the affirmative she questioned why he hadn’t but reached out. “Properly, I put my cellphone quantity on it,” she mentioned. Elderfield, solely barely flummoxed, mentioned he didn’t name as a result of “in Britain, if any person says one thing good about you, you don’t name again, as a result of it’s such as you’re asking them to do it once more.”
Frankenthaler’s response? “Properly, you clearly haven’t been in New York for very lengthy.”
Every week later they have been discussing the Fauve exhibition in individual and Frankenthaler got here ready. “Helen mentioned she had now learn my catalogue,” Elderfield writes within the new preface. “Great, inspiring,” Frankenthaler advised him of the publication earlier than saying “and, I used to be questioning . . . would you want to write down a e book about me?”
“Helen was at all times very, very clear about what she wished,” Elderfield says.
The e book that adopted was written over the course of a decade and knowledgeable by intensive conversations with the artist. The up to date version permits Elderfield to debate her later profession in better depth, enriched by a long time of analysis and the of eight posthumous Frankenthaler exhibitions he organized at Gagosian.
The brand new version’s launch is timed to 2 Gagosian exhibitions of Frankenthaler’s work set to open later this month in Italy: “Helen Frankenthaler: Portray With out Guidelines” on the Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi in Florence, which runs from September 27 to January 26, 2025, and “Helen Frankenthaler: Portray on Paper, 1990 – 2002” at Gagosian Rome from September 30 – November 23.