"The whole business of spotting; the small area of color in a big canvas; how edges meet; how accidents are controlled; all this fascinates me, though it is often where I am most facile and most seducible by my own talent”
Harmoniously filled with cool-toned hues framed by expanses of vivid yellows, Black Touch is a pivotal example of Helen Frankenthaler’s early 1960s “soak-stain” paintings which powered her to enormous success as a pioneer of the Color Field movement. Executed in 1965, Black Touch is an exceptional presentation of Frankenthaler’s deft use of black paint amongst flowing geometric zones of color accentuating her painterly technique. Later known as the “soak-stain” method, Frankenthaler’s application of thinned acrylic paint gently poured and guided on unprimed canvas generate subtle layers of color that appear simultaneously smooth and three-dimensional while preserving vibrancy. Created on the floor as opposed to an easel or wall, Black Touch achieves a resplendent sense of fluidity within a carefully constructed composition. Closely after the completion of Black Touch, Frankenthaler’s influence as a leading figure within the 1960s Color Field movement was cemented by her selection as one of four artists to represent the United States at the Venice Biennale in 1966. Other notable “soak-stain” paintings from the remarkable decade reside in the permanent collects ions of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Phillips collects ion, Washington D.C; Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit; and Buffalo AKG Art Museum, Buffalo. Held in the same private collects ion for over 50 years, Black Touch represents a critical breakthrough in Frankenthaler’s early career in abstraction where controlled forms and experimentation coalesce.
Similar to her peers in the 1950s and 60s, including Jackson Pollock, William de Kooning, and Robert Motherwell, Frankenthaler was concerned with the painterly gesture as a vehicle for aesthetic expression. However, Frankenthaler was unique in developing gestures which required attentive maneuvers and watchful rotations of her canvases, resulting in smoothly spread paint and immersive, watercolor-like works laden with a calming sensibility. Further, Frankenthaler’s departure from the materiality of paint central to the work of her fellow Abstract Expressionists carved a place for her and her work to flourish. The saturated fields of hue and expressive spirit evident in Black Touch mark Frankenthaler’s mastery of gesture and tonal structure which permeate the senses and enliven the mind.
Enveloping the viewer in meditative washes of diluted paint, Black Touch suggests the silhouettes of organic forms within its structures of rectilinear shapes while being uniquely void of brushwork. As stated by Adam Gopnik, “What’s impressive about the early soak-stain Frankenthalers, of course, is how unpainted they are, how little brushwork there is in them. Their ballistics are their ballet, the play of pouring, and a Rorschach-like invitation to the discovery of form,” (Adam Gopnik in “Helen Frankenthaler and the Messy Art of Life,” The New Yorker, 12 April 2021). Epitomizing a key moment in her 1960s practice, Black Touch ebbs and flows, baring translucencies, ripples, and deep swaths which serve as memories of Frankenthaler’s early soak-stain process. Frankenthaler's chromaticity reveals the influence of Matisse's paintings that emerged from the colorful revolution of his seminal Fauvism period, expanding upon his luxurious application of jewel-like tones to flatten depth and space within the painting's surface. Similar to the harmonious balance of blue in Henri Matisse's 1912 Window at Tangier, where subtle nuances of the hue distinguish compositional elements of an expansive vista, diaphonous washes of blue pigment structure the abstract landscape and pictorial plane that unfold in Frankenthaler's Black Touch. Here, the painting’s namesake section of black floats in a pool of cobalt blue gradations and closely attaches itself to characteristic light beige and pale-yellow fragments, revealing a minor area of untouched canvas. A pasture green plane resides comfortably between lyrical bands of shadowy purple and yellow ochre, while small splashes of excess color and barely overlapping shapes provide intimate moments of early experimentation. Due to skillful spatial tension and color fields comprised without strokes, Black Touch incites an inescapably soothing pull.
"What’s impressive about the early soak-stain Frankenthalers, of course, is how unpainted they are, how little brushwork there is in them. Their ballistics are their ballet, the play of pouring, and a Rorschach-like invitation to the discovery of form,”
Black Touch’s inimitable allure, from its hypnotic color to pleasantly visible threads of canvas, encouraged Frankenthaler’s longstanding dedication to the soak-stain process. Claimed by Frankenthaler in 1965, “The whole business of spotting; the small area of color in a big canvas; how edges meet; how accidents are controlled; all this fascinates me, though it is often where I am most facile and most seducible by my own talent” (Helen Frankenthaler with Henry Geldzahler in “An Interview with Helen Frankenthaler,” Artforum, Vol. 4, No.2, October 1965). Frankenthaler invites the viewer to dissolve themselves in the saturated, energetic surface of Black Touch, easing into the work like the paint which has eased into the unprimed canvas. While her process was strategic and ephemeral, Black Touch is a t.mes less reminder of the poetic nuances in color and form achieved by Frankenthaler’s early genius.
