This Is Not a Book
1995-1996, published 1997
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View on museum website →Medium
illustrated book with five etching, photo-etching, aquatint, and mezzotint (two with stencil-applied opaque watercolor); two etching and photo-etching (one with stencil-applied opaque watercolor); two etching, photo-etching, and aquatint (one with stencil-applied opaque watercolor); and two lithographs (including title page and half-title page)
Classification
Volume
Department
CG-W
Museum
National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
Credit
Gift of Neal T. Turtell and Thomas G. Klarner
Accession Number
2022.35.19.8
Art Historical Context
Helen Frankenthaler's *This Is Not a Book (1995–1996, published 1997 is a playful yet profound illustrated volume that exemplifies the artist's late-career exploration of printmaking. A leading figure in second-generation Abstractism and color field painting, Frankenthaler renowned for her innovative "soak-stain" in paintings, where thinned pigments bled into unprimed canvas. Here, she translates that lyricism into book form, challenging traditional notions of reading and art with abstract imagery that evokes vast landscapes and emotional depths. The work features an exquisite array of techni...
About the Artist
Helen Frankenthaler
Helen Frankenthaler (1928–2011) was born in New York City into a cultivated family; her father was a justice of the New York Supreme Court. She studied painting at the Dalton School under the Mexican muralist Rufino Tamayo and went on to Bennington College in Vermont, graduating in 1949. Returning to New York, she entered the circle of the Abstract Expressionist painters and studied with Hans Hofm...