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Fall 2020 Yale University Art Gallery MARK MARESCA FROM THE DIRECTOR SINCE THE GALLERY closed such as Carlo Maratti’s Study for content that is available online, art from across time and cultures. in March due to the COVID-19 the Altarpiece of Saint Rosalie such as the powerful panel We are a place for you. pandemic, our world has trans- among the Plague-Stricken (ca. discussion “The Legacy of We have spent the past few formed in ways we might never 1657–60), which Maratti made as Lynching,” one of the last events months creating a plan for sharing have imagined. As we begin to a way to heal after an outbreak of to take place at the Gallery before our collection while keeping emerge from our homes, we are the Plague in the city of Palermo, quarantine. The panel was part of everyone safe. My hope is that we trying to establish a new normal Italy. More recently, works like the programming for the special can help our communities reflect and striving to find balance. By Titus Kaphar’s Another Fight exhibition Reckoning with “The on how their lives have been safely reactivating the Gallery for Remembrance (2015) open Incident”: John Wilson’s Studies impacted by the events of 2020 and welcoming back visitors on pathways for constructive conver- for a Lynching Mural, which, and that together we can move a limited basis this fall, we can sations, especially now, when along with our two other special forward and meet once again in provide opportunities for our injustice is thrown into stark relief. exhibitions—Place, Nations, the galleries. communities to listen, learn, I have been impressed by Generations, Beings: 200 Years of and grow amid rapidly changing how the Gallery’s creative staff has Indigenous North American Art See you soon, and stay well. current events. used digital resources to prioritize and James Prosek: Art, Artifact, The hundreds of thousands access for our local, national, Artifice—has been extended of objects in our collection remind and global communities. Our through the spring. us that great art transcends the welcoming Visitor Services staff The Gallery has been and immediate circumstances of its is available to answer questions in always will be committed to the Stephanie Wiles time and resonates across eras. real time through a Zoom link on community on Yale’s campus, to The Henry J. Heinz II Director Many objects in our collection our website. Our enhanced online our friends and neighbors in New were created to respond to the newsletter highlights objects in Haven, and to all those seeking to traumas of wars and pandemics, the collection and programming engage with meaningful works of From left: Carlo Maratti, Study for the Altarpiece of Saint Rosalie among the Plague-Stricken, ca. 1657–60. Oil on canvas. Yale University Art Gallery, Maitland F. Griggs, B.A. 1896, Fund | Titus Kaphar, Another Fight for Remembrance, 2015. Oil on canvas. Yale University Art Gallery, Purchased with a gift from the Arthur and Constance Zeckendorf Foundation. Courtesy the artist 2 MARK MARESCA POINT OF VIEW AS A SECURITY GUARD AT the Gallery, I ensure the safety of both the windows facing the Margaret and Angus Wurtele Sculpture Garden guests and the artworks, but in quieter moments, I really enjoy looking makes the objects glisten as you walk around them. closely at the art on view. Now and then, I’m stationed in the Asian art Maybe it’s because of the colors of the glazes or familiarity of galleries, where three pieces in particular always catch my eye: a Tang- the animals, but I’ve noticed that young children are usually the first to dynasty horse and two Bactrian camels. I’m always struck by the fact spot the horse and camels when they enter the Asian art galleries. I’m that the sculptures are uncovered, not in glass cases like many of the grateful that the sculptures are out of reach of small hands because the other objects in the space. I enjoy the unimpeded view of these ancient children often want to touch them. I think that looking at these objects works and find their detail and naturalism pretty incredible: the horse from a child’s point of view has made me appreciate them even more. flaring its nostrils; the grooves in its mane and tail implying tiny braids; a textured saddle blanket placed on its back. The camels appear equally Mark Maresca is a Gallery security guard. naturalistic as they raise their heads and open their mouths, as if they are braying. The glazes on all are brilliant; the light coming in from the Students view a pair of Tang-dynasty Bactrian camels from the early eighth century C.E. in the Asian art galleries during the Gallery’s annual undergraduate reception, 2019 3 CYNTHIA SCHWARZ CLOSE LOOKING Helen Frankenthaler’s Low Tide Helen Frankenthaler, Low Tide, 1963. Acrylic on canvas. Yale University Art Gallery, Gift of Susan Morse Hilles. © 2020 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York 4 Frequent visitors to the Gallery are likely familiar with Color Field painter Helen Frankenthaler’s Island Weather II (1963), a longtime anchoring presence in the modern and contemporary art galleries. But visitors may be less familiar with Frankenthaler’s Low Tide, also dated to 1963, now on view in the Gallery’s exhibition James Prosek: Art, Artifact, Artifice. Though the painting was gifted to the Gallery in 1964, it had rarely been placed on view until 2019, when it was requested for loan to the exhibition Abstract Climates: Helen Frankenthaler in Provincetown at the Parrish Art Museum, in Water Mill, New York. In preparing to lend Low Tide to this exhibition, curators and conservators had the opportunity to bring the painting out of storage and rediscover its particular qualities and nuances. CONSERVING COLOR FIELD PAINTINGS presents a unique challenge. The Color Field painters—a group of mid-20th-century American artists who covered canvases with flat, solid fields of color—often used the raw canvas as a compositional element, so the treatment of these paintings involves cleaning a bare textile surface. These works also lack the layer of varnish that typically coats and protects the surface of many traditional paintings. In the case of Low Tide, the off-white, slightly speckled canvas is an integral part of Frankenthaler’s restrained color palette, which envelops the viewer and evokes the landscape of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, where she kept a studio in 1963. Frankenthaler turned increasingly to the coastal scenery outside her window for inspiration while working in her studio on the Cape, which, according to her stepdaughter Lise Motherwell, “had a great view of the water. When you were standing on the second floor, you could see the colors emerging as the tide went out, the green of the eelgrass in the water, the sand underneath. Helen’s paintings really capture that experience—the feeling of looking down into that.” Frankenthaler worked by pouring thinned paint directly onto an unstretched canvas laid out on her studio floor. Cascading onto the canvas surface, the fluid paint flowed and pooled into neighboring colors, staining the canvas and creating the subtle color variations and blended boundaries that are visible today, while leaving the negative space of the bare cotton canvas as a prominent feature in the final composition. The year Frankenthaler painted Low Tide, 1963, she made the transition from oil to acrylic paints, which had been introduced to the market only about 10 years before. She had experimented with acrylics Treating the drip presented another challenge. Conservators earlier in her career but struggled with them because they did not soak follow a code of ethics that mandates that anything applied to a work into her canvases in the way to which she had become accustomed. Oil of art must be reversible and distinguishable from the original. In a paints, however, stained the canvas around the pools of color, creating a traditional painting, lost areas of color might be carefully inpainted halo effect that has become a feature of her “soak-stain” paintings. Yet using reversible paints over a layer of varnish, restoring coherence to Frankenthaler also knew the oil could embrittle the canvas, and so, over the picture. This painting would be permanently stained if conservators time, she adapted her technique to acrylic paints, which dried faster, used such a strategy. Instead, tiny pieces of tissue paper were toned could be thinned with water, and did not result in the distinctive oil halo. to match the color of the paint and were then carefully adhered to the In 2019, when conservators examined Low Tide, they found canvas with weak wheat-starch paste, a reversible adhesive used more that the off-white canvas had become soiled and was stained where commonly in paper conservation. The stain, once distracting from the it touched the acidic wood of the stretcher bars. There was also enveloping color composition, is now less visible, and visitors can once evidence of previous damage: a drip running down the left side of again appreciate this work after its long period in storage. the painting had stained the canvas and discolored the bright hues. Conservators carefully dry-cleaned the canvas with soft sponges, Cynthia Schwarz is Senior Associate Conservator of Paintings. reducing the stains around its perimeter. This allowed the negative space of the white expanses to read coherently and the color balance within the picture to be restored. Detail of the left side of the painting during treatment, showing the lighter tone of the canvas after cleaning (below arrow) and the stain before retouching 5 FROM THE ARCHIVES This year, the Gallery celebrates the centennial of the Société Anonyme, Inc., an artist-run organization established in 1920 to share modern art, primarily made in the United States and Europe, with American audiences.

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