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Texas State University

The Essential Problem:

The Role of Gender in the Careers of Helen Frankenthaler and Miriam Schapiro

A Thesis Submitted to

the Faculty of the School of Art & Design

in Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of

Bachelor of Arts

Art History

Shelby Sult

San Marcos, Texas

May 2020 “Essentially speaking,” we need both to theorize essentialist spaces from which to speak and, simultaneously, to deconstruct these spaces to keep them from solidifying. —Diana Fuss

Protesting the poor efforts made by major art institutions to include women artists is a hot topic among activists today and has been for nearly half a century. In 1970, women took to the streets outside of the Modern Museum of Art to protest a painting and sculpture exhibition, where, out of forty-three artists, only one was a woman: Helen Frankenthaler.1 Women activists and artists like Miriam Schapiro, a key leader of the feminist art movement, founded their movement during the seventies and brought issues like underrepresentation in museums to light.

Facing sexism and marginalization, women artists worked fiercely to find success within a system that was built by, and for, men. But with the odds stacked against them, how did women artists, like Frankenthaler and Schapiro, manage to succeed? The careers of Helen Frankenthaler and Miriam Schapiro exemplify two different routes through which women artists found success during the seventies: through either the suppression or accentuation of gender as a crucial part of their work. To explore these prospective routes, I will compare the artists’ works, intentions, and inclusion of identity, based on social context, examine their approaches to taking up space, and evaluate sexism in critical responses to their work.

Helen Frankenthaler, who gained popularity in the decades after World War II, created paintings that transcended personal identity; her abstract process-driven work was not diaristic.

Starting in the seventies, antithetically, Miriam Schapiro utilized form and content for its symbolic value to express her personal identity, and women collectively.2 Understanding the

1 Griselda Pollock, “The Missing Future: MoMA and Modern Women,” in Cornelia H. Butler and Alexandra Schwartz, Modern Women: Women Artists at the Museum of Modern Art (Museum of Modern Art, 2010), 29. 2 Linda Stein, “Miriam Schapiro: Woman-Warrior with Lace,” Fiberarts 24 (March 1998): 35.

1 difference in social context during these two time periods, the early sixties and late seventies, is essential in understanding why each artist made the decisions they did. Though taking different visual and ideological approaches, both artists made extremely large artwork which, upon creation, posed groundbreaking territorial challenges to social expectations placed on women.

Frankenthaler’s process prompted her enormous scale, while Shapiro’s motives in making large work represented a deliberate feminist statement. Despite Frankenthaler’s attempted transcendence of gender, critics routinely feminized formal elements of her work. Through their analysis of color, shape, and even process, critics asserted that gender and form are inextricably tied.3 While critics reductively feminized Frankenthaler’s work, Schapiro used strategic essentialism – the intentional embrace of the idea of fundamental feminine identity – as a progressive tactic. Though critics did not make essentialist claims regarding Schapiro’s work, she likewise faced insensitive sexism which worked against her objectives. Analyzing these distinct choices made by the artists, their social context, and reception of their work allows a thorough understanding of how and why each artist approached gender in the way that they did.

I take a feminist approach in comparing the intentions and works made by Helen

Frankenthaler and Miriam Schapiro, and in assessing the critical reception of the two artists’ work. The insistence of a female “essence” in the evaluations of art critics and in Miriam

Schapiro’s content is prevalent, and I examine this essentialism through a feminist lens.

Philosopher Diana Fuss, whom I quote in the beginning of the paper, defines essentialism as “a belief in the real true essence of things, the invariable and fixed properties which define the

3 Sybil E Gohari, “Gendered Reception: There and Back Again: An Analysis of the Critical Reception of Helen Frankenthaler,” Woman’s Art Journal 35, no. 1 (2014): 33–39. Gohari catalogs several critical reviews of Frankenthaler’s artwork, and she identifies this pattern in the reviews.

‘whatness’ of a given entity.”4 Damaging uses of essentialism exist in critical reception of

Frankenthaler’s work, where critics countered her intention by associating her work with an organic, feminine nature, failing to recognize the artist for her own exceptional skill. By suggesting that craft and feminine symbols represent women as a whole, Miriam Schapiro makes broad essentializing claims in her work, which served to empower and unite women. At the time, this unification was perhaps more crucial than a universally accurate claim. In Essentially

Speaking, Diana Fuss emphasizes the responsibility of feminist analysis to continuously examine essentialism; feminists must both acknowledge its positive uses in identity formation, yet beware of the damage that fixating identity, and assuming universality, can have.5 In employing a feminist analysis, and examining essentialism, to compare the careers of Frankenthaler and

Schapiro, I gain a deeper understanding of the differing ways that women artists of the seventies found success.

I am analyzing work by Frankenthaler and Schapiro at slightly staggered points in time and at different stages of the artists’ lives, which certainly plays a role in their gender-related identifications and career strategies, as they faced varying social contexts. In 1952, when she was in her twenties, Frankenthaler created her breakthrough stain-painting Mountains and Sea.6

Though critics did not write much about Frankenthaler during this time, many exhibitions, books, and reviews included her work after she had gained great popularity from the fifties on.7

4 Though essence can extend to other theoretical frameworks, Fuss explains the uses of essentialism within a feminist context in: Diana Fuss, Essentially Speaking: Feminism, Nature & Difference (London, New York: Routledge, 1989), xi. The quote from Fuss at the beginning of the essay can be found in the same work, on page 118. 5 Fuss, Essentially Speaking, 118. 6 E. A. Carmean and Helen Frankenthaler, Helen Frankenthaler: A Paintings Retrospective (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., in association with the Modern Museum of Fort Worth, 1989), 12. 7 Gohari, “Gendered Reception,” 33-39; Cindy Nemser, “Interview with Helen Frankenthaler,” Arts Magazine 46, no. 2 (November 1971): 51-55; Griselda Pollock, “Killing Men and Dying Women: A Woman’s Touch in the Cold Zone of American Painting in the 1950s,” in Avant-Gardes and Partisans Reviewed, edited by Griselda Pollock and

There has been extensive critical review of work by Frankenthaler and her contributions, and great care has gone into keeping clear and concise records of her work.8 Overall, Miriam

Schapiro exhibited less than Frankenthaler and belonged to a more niche feminist field, so there is less breadth in terms of criticism of Schapiro’s work. To focus on Schapiro’s career as one that accentuated gender, it is essential for me to consider works that the artist made in the seventies, when she began to concentrate primarily on women’s issues. I will examine reviews written during this slightly later period as well as primary sources, such as her work itself and interviews with her.9

In evaluating these artists’ careers through a gendered lens, I am interested in how the history of documentation has shaped the way we understand their importance today, as both artists have made substantial contributions to the course of art history. Helen Frankenthaler, a legendary stain-painter, and Miriam Schapiro, a feminist icon, are known for their innovation and influence. Though Frankenthaler did not make work with feminist content, she nonetheless paved the way for future women painters and is well known for her groundbreaking technique and skill. Schapiro is highly revered for laying the foundation for the feminist art movement and for her decorative work, which honored women of past, present, and future. To best honor these two artists, it is imperative to explore numerous aspects of their careers, including each artists’ intentions and how they decided gender would play a role in their work.

Fred Orton (Manchester: Manchester Univ. Press, 1996), 220-294; Bett Schumacher, “The Woman Problem: Gender Displacement in the Art of Helen Frankenthaler,” Woman’s Art Journal 31, no. 2 (2010): 12–21. 8 Carmean and Frankenthaler, Helen Frankenthaler; Helen Frankenthaler, After “Mountains and Sea”: Frankenthaler 1956-1959 (New York: Guggenheim Museum, 1998); Helen Frankenthaler and E. C. Goossen, Helen Frankenthaler (New York: Rapoport Printing, 1969). 9 Stein, “Miriam Schapiro,” 35-40; Norma Broude, “Miriam Schapiro and ‘Femmage’: Reflections on the Conflict between Decoration and Abstraction in Twentieth-Century Art,” Arts Magazine 54, no. 6 (February 1980): 83-87; Norma Broude and Mary D. Garrard, “Miriam Schapiro (1923–2015),” American Art 29, no. 3 (2015): 132-135; Miriam Schapiro, "Oral History Interview with Miriam Schapiro," interview by Ruth Bowman, Smithsonian Archives of American Art, September 10, 1989, https://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/interviews/oral-history-interview- miriam-schapiro-11695.

Artist’s Intent

Helen Frankenthaler and Miriam Schapiro, though contemporaries and friends, made considerably different work. Helen Frankenthaler employed a formal and gestural approach as an action painter, concerning herself primarily with form and process. In Frankenthaler’s large- scale paintings, she maneuvered thin paint around an unprimed surface—a method of stain- painting for which she became famous. She established ambiguity by removing identifiable content, denying worldly associations, and letting the painting speak for itself. 10 Miriam

Schapiro, on the other hand, made representational work through a collage process she named

“femmage.” Schapiro’s “femmage” incorporated fabric swatches and embroidery, challenging traditional hierarchies within fine art which valued mediums like painting over craft.11 Schapiro used bright, feminine colors and decorative patterns of craft, thus reclaiming feminine motifs which were considered inferior.12 As one of the key figures of the feminist art movement,

Schapiro was deliberate in making work that conveyed women’s experiences; her intentions were to reclaim feminine themes and elevate the unique voices and art of women. Schapiro’s feminist approach acknowledges her own specifically female perspective, which contrasts

Frankenthaler’s efforts to overcome her gender by abstracting her work. Recognizing these artist’s various intentions are a key part of understanding their approach to gender and gaining broader knowledge of their work.

Helen Frankenthaler’s stain painting resulted in large, organically flowing areas of paint that made up often energetic compositions. Frankenthaler’s process was physical, as she used her strength to guide paint across canvases laid flat on her studio floor. Her process was famously

10 Frankenthaler, After “Mountains and Sea,” 24. 11 Broude, “Miriam Schapiro and ‘Femmage,’” 85. 12 Stein, “Miriam Schapiro,” 35.

5 inspired by Jackson Pollock’s drip paintings.13 Pollock flung thick paint across a canvas and worked in layers, creating all-over compositions that are characteristic of the Abstract

Expressionist movement. In her own style, Frankenthaler thinned down the paint and explored its staining properties; she balanced artistic manipulation with paint’s tendency to flow and take the path of least resistance. She collaborated with the medium, rather than controlling and throwing it. This process resulted in fields of stained color that had a floating, atmospheric effect that entranced viewers.14 To some viewers, Frankenthaler’s paintings offer an invitation to experience and draw interpretive conclusions. These interpretations are often contradictory to

Frankenthaler’s intent, which was to create a strong composition and minimize her personal identity in doing so. Acknowledging Frankenthaler’s attempted transcendence of gender, in addition to her paintings’ interpretive opportunities, will be key in evaluating the critical responses to her work.

The intent behind Frankenthaler’s work is complex and the artist avoided discussing meaning. Frankenthaler’s process-driven works contained ambiguous compositions that were made up of floating fields of color. Paint did not rest on the surface of the painting, rather it emerged from within the canvas itself. This atmospheric emergence was groundbreaking for painting, as these stains removed the three-dimensionality of the paint itself. In addition to the paintings’ atmospheric visual qualities, Frankenthaler’s titles also implied a relationship with location and space, and her colors and shapes relate to our natural surroundings, though these associations contradicted her intent. In her 1967 Nature Abhors a Vacuum (figure 1), the work’s title references nature. This reference is enhanced through stacked horizontal shapes and colors

13 Frankenthaler, After “Mountains and Sea,” 12. 14 Frankenthaler created this soaked, floating effect, rather than Pollock who used thick paint and thus brought the viewers’ attention to the materiality of the paint itself, a point that is expressed in: Frankenthaler and Goossen, Helen Frankenthaler, 9.

6 like green and yellow ochre.15 However, Frankenthaler did not intend viewers to associate her work with nature, as she claimed that her painting “has no more to do with nature… than the greatest Pollocks or Monets have to do with nature,” remarking that “even the apples in a

Cezanne primarily have little to do with apples,” and that apples are probably equally prevalent in the work of Mondrian.16 Frankenthaler focused on form and process when describing her work, explaining that the goal of painting is “making a picture that works.”17 The ambiguity of her compositions allow for endless interpretations, for those who wish to interpret, and their undefined subject matter allows for its meaning to change over time. A successful picture, to

Frankenthaler, “has a place and rightness and an ability to last and grow.”18 To create a compelling visual experience, Frankenthaler intentionally excluded symbolic meaning from her paintings, and minimized expressions of personal experience.

Antithetically, Miriam Schapiro’s work was laced with symbols and personal experience, and the artist’s allusions to her feminine identity coordinated with her process. Schapiro conveyed her feminist objectives through craft and decoration to challenge the notion that craft was a low-art and to connect with this feminine tradition.19 Schapiro worked in “femmage,” a name she coined for her method of making, in reference to “collage,” the layering and combining pieces of fabric and embroidered materials to create compositions, and its specific female tradition.20 Schapiro’s engagement with the medium was perhaps less bodily than

Frankenthaler’s but still hands-on, as visible in the complexity of Anatomy of a Kimono (figure 2

15 Frankenthaler broadly notes that, because of her choices in color and shape, viewers read landscapes into her paintings: Henry Geldzahler, “Interview with Helen Frankenthaler,” Artforum 4, no. 2 (October 1965): 37. 16 Carmean and Frankenthaler, Helen Frankenthaler, 8. 17 Ibid. 18 Ibid. 19 Broude, “Miriam Schapiro and ‘Femmage,’” 85. 20 Ibid.

7 and 3). Schapiro, in contrast to Frankenthaler who rejected symbolism, included visual elements or explicit symbols linked to womanhood in her work.

The inclusion of particular symbols in Schapiro’s work supports her intent of elevating

“feminine” themes and representing women. An example is her use of the heart shape to acknowledge sentiment, demonstrated by her 1982 The Phoenix Heart (figure 4), which was a feeling commonly associated with women.21 Schapiro described her interest in this shape, explaining that she is “really interested in the heart image because [she sees] the ways in which women are made fun of and trivialized,” and how women are “used intellectually as well as emotionally.”22 She took it upon herself to “raise up this symbol” which she dignified or emboldened by turning it into “broad, simple kinds of iconic images.”23 By championing sentiment and decoration, Schapiro questioned their historical trivialization and assured the importance of themes with feminine associations in art.

Each artist’s intent and working process, which expresses this intent, reflects the choices each artist made, or attempted to make, to emphasize or de-emphasize their gender. Helen

Frankenthaler intended to downplay her personal gender identity while Miriam Schapiro embraced her own. Frankenthaler’s disinterest in including feminine identity in her work is evident in both the artist’s own words and her adherence to formalist ideology. On the other hand, Schapiro embraced her femininity through “femmage” to raise awareness of women’s issues and symbols, and to promote craft as a medium for fine art.

21 Schapiro, "Oral History Interview,” 13. 22 Stein, “Miriam Schapiro,” 35 23 Ibid, 35, 38.

Identity and Social Context

The artists’ different attitudes toward gender exemplify the role that identity played in their careers overall. Helen Frankenthaler resisted associations between her paintings and her personal identity, as she had no desire to make diaristic work.24 Unlike Frankenthaler, Miriam

Schapiro unquestionably channeled her personal identity and gender in her career and work.

Schapiro made work about her personal experiences and believed in women’s’ collective identity, as the artist responded to social pressures that were placed on women.25 The social context surrounding these two artists is an essential component of understanding their work and why they made the decisions that they did. As an artist who entered the art scene in the fifties,

Helen Frankenthaler found success within the male-dominated system by suppressing aspects of her female identity. This suppression was not necessary for Miriam Schapiro, who made work as a part of the feminist movement, as accepting and showcasing identity was an integral part of the movement. The role that identity plays (or does not play) in the artists’ work mirrors their attitude toward gender within their careers overall. Examining this role, and how it stems from social context, is important to understanding the artists’ work.

Prominent associations between painting and her gender, or identity in general, are not what Helen Frankenthaler desired. In an interview, Frankenthaler minimized the role of identity by describing it as a “long list” that comprised “age, height, weight, history, nationality, religion, sex, pains, habits, attractions,” but that “being female is one of many in this long list.”

Frankenthaler stated that “every fact of one’s reality is in one’s work,” evasively admitting that her work does reflect her gender, but in a minute way, like in any other work of art that has been

24 Nemser, “Interview with Helen Frankenthaler,” 54. 25 Ibid.

9 made.26 Associating Frankenthaler’s work with her gender takes focus away from the works’ gestural and formal nature, and not only clouds her intention, but also serves to marginalize her as a woman artist. Stating that her work was related to her female identity would have entered her work into the category of “feminine art,” thus resulting in her exclusion from the elite group of New York post-painterly abstraction artists.

Helen Frankenthaler and women post-painterly abstractionists often experienced difficulty in establishing their careers and making space for themselves during the fifties and sixties, as they were taken less seriously.27 Frankenthaler’s connection to art critic Clement

Greenberg was advantageous, as he was able to introduce Frankenthaler to several of her would- be colleagues at a young age. Though Helen Frankenthaler benefitted from her relationships with men in her career, these relationships presented opportunities for others to categorize her as lesser-than her male colleagues. During Frankenthaler’s marriage to famous painter Robert

Motherwell, a Time magazine article noted that “for the past eleven years, she has… always seemed in the artistic shadow of her husband” and that “it came as something of a discovery to learn that Helen really can paint.”28 This condescending tone is heightened by the implication that Frankenthaler lacked visibility. In reality, the artist had represented the United States at the

1966 Venice Biennale and had a solo retrospective exhibition at the Whitney Museum of

American Art in 1969, among many other major accomplishments.29 Frankenthaler defied social expectations requiring women to be passive and sweet by being “brash” and “aggressive,” in order to stand a chance in her competitive and male-oriented environment.

26 Nemser, “Interview with Helen Frankenthaler,” 54. 27 Mary Gabriel writes about these struggles in her book Ninth Street Women: Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, and Helen Frankenthaler: Five Painters and the Movement that Changed Modern Art (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2018). 28 “Heiress to a New Tradition,” TIME Magazine 93, no. 13 (March 28, 1969): 64. 29 Carmean, Helen Frankenthaler, 102.

Schapiro and the feminist art movement also defied social expectations and, unlike

Frankenthaler, put a spotlight on personal experiences. Shapiro took a feminist approach of

“consciousness raising,” or speaking about one’s experiences as a woman to raise awareness, and encouraged her students to use “identity as content.”30 Schapiro explained her career in an interview by saying “it all started from [her] experience,” and that she believed an artist “can provide nothing for society unless it comes from within.”31 Shapiro also aimed to represent all women by opening up her work to channel their voices collectively.32 In Shapiro’s Collaboration

Series, as described by feminist art historians Norma Broude and Mary D. Garrard, the artist situated her personal identity alongside women artists of the past in constructing an

“inspirational female genealogy.”33 In her 1976 “collaboration,” Mary Cassatt and Me (figure 5),

Schapiro merged a replication of a painting by Cassatt into her own collaged composition. Her motive was to record her “female artistic [ancestry]” and “emphasize the woman artist’s view of women’s private lives” by combining the painting’s self-reflective imagery with her own reference to women’s handiwork.34 Through these methods, Schapiro used a strategic essentialism, or the intentional acceptance of the idea of fundamental feminine identity, to unite women through their common experiences. Schapiro highlighted the private, domestic perspective of a woman as a relatable matter, and combined it with collage to add her own touch and to reference past women’s artistic contributions.

The state of craft and decoration during the seventies is also an important context to consider when examining Miriam Schapiro’s work. There is a long history of women-makers,

30 Schapiro, "Oral History Interview,” 7; Miriam Schapiro, “An Interview with the Artist,” interview by Kristen Frederickson and Sarah E. Webb, Miriam Schapiro (Gainesville, GA: Brenau University Galleries, 2004), 10. 31 Schapiro, "Oral History Interview,” 20. 32 Stein, “Miriam Schapiro,” 35. 33 Broude and Garrard, “Miriam Schapiro,” 134. 34 Thalia Gouma-Peterson, "Miriam Schapiro: An Art of Becoming," American Art 11, no. 1 (1997): 28-29.

11 and, due to their exclusion from the traditional art scene, their forms of craft and functional art were not thought of as art. In 1918, architect Le Corbusier famously expressed, “there is a hierarchy in the arts: decorative art at the bottom, and the human form at the top. Because we are men!”35 This historical indisposition toward decorative art continued throughout the sixties and seventies. In a 1969 interview, artist Eva Hesse asserted that decoration was “the only art sin” and refused to even repeat the word, as she did not want it associated with her work.36

Recognizing that the distaste toward craft was linked to sexism, Schapiro embraced craft to call attention to this discrimination against women and the form of art itself. In an effort to remove the line that separates fine art from craft, Schapiro questioned the belittlement of beauty, decoration, and work without “significant content.”37 Schapiro and other feminist artists explored decoration and feminine themes with fervor, though these subjects were not highly revered.

Painter Joan Snyder describes the impact that women artists had, saying that “women’s work helped to pump the blood back into what were dry, cold, and minimal years in the art world in the late 1960s.”38 Through her accentuation of feminine identity, Schapiro shed light on the expansive history of women’s art and asked the world to reevaluate women’s unrecognized contributions in shaping art history.

It is important to keep in mind the artists’ different strategies regarding their identity as we evaluate and compare their careers, as their treatment of identity is an indication of the inclusion or exclusion of gender on behalf of the artist. Furthermore, it is important to recognize that these different functions of personal identity in their work may have been a strategy that was

35 Norma Broude references Le Corbusier and Amédée Ozenfant in “Miriam Schapiro and ‘Femmage,’” 83. 36 Nemser, Art Talk, 217. 37 Broude and Garrard, “Miriam Schapiro,” 133. 38 Katy Siegel and Dawoud Bey, High Times, Hard Times: New York Painting, 1967-1975 (New York: Independent Curators International, 2006), 115.

12 affirmed through their social contexts. Overall, these social contexts influenced the success of these two artists, given their choices to subdue or accentuate their gender.

Taking Up Space

Making work on a large scale was one method that both artists used to declare their objectives. Miriam Schapiro, in an effort to elevate craft and combat social expectations of women, created large scale craft work that took space for women as a “territorial expansion.”

While Schapiro occasionally utilized scale to emphasize her objectives, Frankenthaler is notorious for monumental paintings. Frankenthaler’s creation of large-scale paintings was a power move, but had more to do with serving her formal and gestural goals. Both Miriam

Schapiro and Helen Frankenthaler used large scale in a way that reflected their approach to feminine identity. Schapiro, who focused on gender, made large work to promote her feminist content. Frankenthaler, who was disinterested in gender, ironically needed to stake her claim, as she was taken less seriously due to her gender, and heighten her works’ seriousness. By exploring how and why these two women artists made such large work, it is possible to explore the relationship between gender and space.

Schapiro is well known today not just for her use of feminine imagery and decorative materials to elevate her feminine subjects, but for her use of large scale as a “territorial expansion.”39 This scale not only literally demonstrates her goal of elevating craft to the level of fine art, but by creating on this scale, Schapiro demands space for women’s representation. The importance of taking up space is linked to the social context in which all women artists, and their work, resided. Schapiro explains the expectations of American women in the sixties by noting that women did not go out and dine together, but that they were accompanied by men. The artist

39 Stein, “Miriam Schapiro,” 39.

13 noted that “women had so much difficulty in taking up space for themselves.”40 In 1976, she exhibited her exaggeratively large artwork Anatomy of a Kimono (figure 2) in defiance of this dilemma, and in reaction against social pressure placed on women to remain small. Ten panels came together to form an artwork that was over six feet tall and fifty feet long; Schapiro claimed that this large work was “one of the first times a woman took that kind of space.”41 The artist described the repressive conditions women faced, and how they inspired her to defiantly

“announce the comfort that a woman has with ‘territory.’”42 This territorial challenge did not ask for, but took, space for women and the style of decoration. Anatomy of a Kimono could be defined as institutional critique, in addition to social critique, as its uncommon spatial claim counters the lack of space given to women artists on museum walls.

Whereas Schapiro spatially expanded in Anatomy of a Kimono, Frankenthaler almost exclusively made large-scale work that subsumed the viewer, a tactic she used for visual effect.

Frankenthaler’s use of large scale promoted the artist’s compositions and ideas, but also demonstrated the artist’s desire for her work to be treated with seriousness. It was common at the time for post-painterly abstractionists to make work of the same physical magnitude, as their formal objectives were similar to Abstract Expressionist painters, whose scale was influenced by the Mexican Muralist Movement.43 Her large work was also due to the space that her bodily stain-painting process required. The enormity of Frankenthaler’s paintings asserted the seriousness of her work, despite the frequent feminization and implied inferiority of the artist’s work, and the majority of post-painterly abstraction artists used a large scale for its authoritative and enveloping visual impact. Whether or not Frankenthaler intentionally used this scale-related

40 Stein, “Miriam Schapiro,” 39. 41 Ibid. 42 Ibid. 43 Frankenthaler and Goossen, Helen Frankenthaler, 8.

14 strategy to circumvent discrimination, it served the artists’ career objectives and the tremendous scale of her work created a compelling visual experience.

Regarding Frankenthaler’s paintings, critics adored the impact of scale on the viewing experience overall.44 Because of the ambiguous and interpretive viewing experience she created, many critics self-reflected and observed their own feelings when engaging with Frankenthaler’s work.45 Critics paired their introspection with their admiration of the large scale of her artwork, meaning that these critics seemed to experience a large, painted mirror. Frankenthaler’s use of large scale was not a feminist “territorial expansion,” like that by Miriam Schapiro’s in Anatomy of a Kimono, as Frankenthaler’s aimed not to make a social statement, but to create a visually enveloping experience. I argue that Frankenthaler’s transcendence of gender, and her overall ambiguous content, prompted critics to find this viewing experience more palatable given its monumental scale.

These spatial decisions relate to the state of women in society and are power moves that both women made in response to their gender. Helen Frankenthaler paid no mind to social pressures that ask women to take up little space, as she made work on a significant scale to best suit her compositions and assert her works’ importance. Miriam Schapiro rejected social pressures similarly, but more deliberately, as she made an extremely large work of art that elevated craft and represented women’s issues. Though each artist treated gender differently throughout their careers, it is interesting that they shared this common strategy of taking up space with their work.

44 Schumacher, “The Woman Problem,” 18-19. 45 Ibid.

Gendered Critical Reception In addition to intent, identity, context, and space, criticism greatly affected these artists’ careers. Criticism shapes the written history of artists and influences the world’s perception of their careers. Art critics’ reception of Frankenthaler and Schapiro’s work had benefits and repercussions for each artist. Different interpretations from art critics, and sexist word choice or ideologies, were counteractive to the artists’ intentions and downplayed their success. Even positive criticism can support harmful ideology, such as critiques that claimed a feminine essence in Frankenthaler’s work. Critique that emphasized the masculine power of Miriam

Schapiro, though not harmful to her career, does support notions of patriarchal power that

Schapiro and other feminists wanted to dismantle. Examining the two artists’ gendered critical reception allows us to better understand their careers.

Despite Helen Frankenthaler’s efforts to subdue her feminine identity, sexist criticism tended to essentialize formal components of her paintings as female, or otherwise minimize the artist’s achievements. Throughout her career, critics described Frankenthaler’s work with language that implied its inferiority to the efforts of her male counterparts. Additionally, critics implied that Frankenthaler’s most important contribution was her ability to inspire male genius.

With extreme frequency, critics and writers described, and still describe, her career as a bridge between Abstract Expressionism and color-field painting. Objectifying Frankenthaler as a bridge emphasizes that her most important success was her ability to inspire men.46 This “bridge” analogy is often paired with an extensive explanation of how Frankenthaler derived her process from Abstract Expressionist painter Jackson Pollock, and that her paintings inspired color-field artists like Kenneth Noland and Morris Louis. Focusing primarily on how Frankenthaler

46 Gohari, “Gendered Reception,” 35.

16 communicated ideas from one male artist to another indicates the prioritization of male ideas, and minimization of female creation.

In addition to this minimization, critics linked Frankenthaler’s gender to the creation of the painting by claiming a female essence in her work. This problematic pigeonholing of

Frankenthaler’s work as feminine was a reduction of its seriousness, given that characteristics associated with femininity were looked down upon at this time. In Frankenthaler’s 1967 painting

Flood (figure 6) critics described the painting for its “magnificent grandiloquent beauty” and

“sumptuous gorgeousness,” as well as its “Turneresque performance” which nods to

Romanticism.47 These rapturous reviews all praise Frankenthaler’s painting for its beauty and lyrical nature. Interestingly, critics’ word choice changed as Frankenthaler shifted to feature bolder colors and more hard edges, as seen in her 1973 painting Nature Abhors a Vacuum (figure

1). Critics rewarded her by pointing out the works’ “epic” scale and “aggressive and powerful” impact.48 This empowering language was typically reserved for her male colleagues, and it is interesting to see how critics applied it to Frankenthaler’s work after she made bolder formal choices that are typically linked to masculinity.

As they did in reviews of Flood, critics associated Frankenthaler’s work with femininity more broadly through linking it to emotion. In a 1969 Time magazine article, the writer claims

Frankenthaler’s work “deals outspokenly with emotion,” that it “bubbles forth with irresistible elation” and shows that “abstract painting can have a heart.”49 However, this same feeling is

“difficult to derive” from paintings by Morris Louis or Kenneth Noland, as men “make it a point of honor not to cry.”50 This evaluation is matched by that of other critics, who claim

47 Carmean and Frankenthaler, Helen Frankenthaler, 50. 48 Ibid, 62. 49 “Heiress to a New Tradition,” 64. 50 Ibid.

Frankenthaler’s work is “too sweet in color,”51 “free, lyrical and feminine,”52 and who draw connections between her “seductive and feminine” palette and “sexual analogy”53 in

Frankenthaler’s bodily process. Helen Frankenthaler openly detested these associations, expressing, “I wonder if my pictures are more ‘lyrical’ (that loaded word!) because I’m a woman. Looking at my paintings as if they were painted by a woman is superficial… The making of serious painting is difficult and complicated for all serious painters.”54 Frankenthaler recognized that critics who suggested a feminine essence in her work were invalidating it, to a degree, due to the flagrant male chauvinism of the time period. Additionally, she objects to the critics’ shallow examinations, as they failed to acknowledge the profoundness of her work.

Regarding the art of Miriam Schapiro, many critics walked a tricky tightrope. Unlike

Frankenthaler, formal aspects of Schapiro’s work were not routinely essentialized as feminine in a way that is contrary to the artist’s intentions, as the artist herself employed a degree of strategic essentialism to unite women. I attribute the absence of this essentializing critique to Schapiro’s undeniable inclusion of gender as the subject of her work and her self-identification as a feminist. For example, when feminist artist Linda Stein describes the feminine qualities of the color and shapes Schapiro used, these artistic choices are not essentialized; Stein did not suggest that Schapiro used the formal elements because of some invisible female force, as it is clear that

Schapiro consciously chose these for their feminine associations.55 However, this specificity did not spare her from sexist critique that was counteractive to her objectives.

51 Elaine Gottlieb, “Helen Frankenthaler,” Arts Magazine 32, no. 4 (January 1958): 55. 52 B.H. Friedman, “Towards the Total Color Image,” Art News 65, no. 4 (Summer 1966): 32. 53 Ibid. 54 Geldzahler, “Interview with Helen Frankenthaler,” 38. 55 Stein, “Miriam Schapiro,” 35.

Though she did not essentialize, Linda Stein walked the tightrope between hypermasculinization and empowerment of Schapiro. Stein playfully describes Schapiro’s feminist efforts in her essay “Miriam Schapiro: Woman-Warrior with Lace,” and the writer overexaggerates the artist’s strength in order to praise.56 Stein describes Schapiro as a “warrior” with “battle gear” who wielded tools to battle the “patriarchal dragon of bigotry,” which clearly conjures an image of Saint George heroically slaying a beast.57 To affirm that Schapiro is successful in her feminist endeavors, does she need to be associated with these characteristics, traditionally praised as masculine, that read as being cut-throat? This use of language could be necessary to assert the importance of her work, in order to counterbalance its feminine associations where craft had been categorized as “weak.” It is clear that Stein’s intent through her description was to challenge gender norms by positioning Schapiro as an aggressive warrior.

However, it would be more progressive to illustrate Schapiro’s artistic and feminist characteristics, and emphasize their power, in order to question what is considered valuable under the patriarchy. Overall, through the masculinizing description, Stein simultaneously empowers Schapiro, yet fails to challenge what characteristics give authority to begin with.

More generally, critics suggested their own meaning behind decorative works. For the most part, art critics did not detest decoration, unlike Le Corbusier and Eva Hesse, who demonstrated their distaste. However, some critics were unwilling to accept the idea that decorative works did not possess conceptual content, at least in the realm of “high art.” An example of this resistance is in the recovery of Matisse’s work. Norma Broude points out that critics have done heavy lifting in order to rescue work by male artists of the past, such as that by

Matisse, from what is “merely decorative” to what is “significantly abstract” in spite of Matisse’s

56 Stein, “Miriam Schapiro,” 35, 40. 57 Ibid.

19 explicit decorative pursuits.58 Like critics and historians who suggest complex intellectual meaning behind Matisse’s intentionally expressive work, critics suggested meaning behind decorative work during the seventies. An example of this insistence on meaning is in critic Jeff

Perrone’s 1976 review of a group decoration exhibition that Schapiro was a part of. Perrone wrote, “the forms, which may strike us as neutralized, can be filled with any kind of meaning, for example, as reference to other decoration, as a feminist statement, as diaristic accumulation of experience, as a pun on modernist painting, or even as a diagram of the ‘fourth dimension.’”59

Through this evaluation, the critic denies the possibility of the work holding no identifiable content, and serving as decoration alone. This implies that the contributions made by women to visual culture through craft, may also be invalidated through their lack of content, or assigned meaning, to be considered art. Though this does not pertain to Schapiro’s work itself, which did have conceptual meaning, the implication is antithetical to what Schapiro and other decorative artists stood for.60 The insistence that decoration does have underlying meaning undermines

Schapiro’s efforts in establishing a place for “mere” decoration as art and subscribes to problematic traditional hierarchies between craft and “high art.”61

These various examples of criticism reflect the social context that these artists were working within and can help us to understand the struggles that these artists faced. Helen

Frankenthaler was met with criticism that undermined the artist’s strength and hard work, and this is evident when analyzing the essentialist claims of these reviews, specifically the critics’ language. Miriam Schapiro’s objectives to make a place for the “merely decorative” through her femmage were not matched by critics, who insisted that decorative work must have conceptual

58 Broude, “Miriam Schapiro and ‘Femmage,’” 84-85. 59 Jeff Perrone, “Approaching the Decorative,” Artforum, vol. 15 (December 1976): 26. 60 Broude, “Miriam Schapiro and ‘Femmage,’” 87. 61 Norma Broude cleverly points out this phenomenon, Ibid.

20 meaning. Lastly, one critics’ masculinizing description of Schapiro contrasts the artist’s efforts to reevaluate what is considered valuable under the patriarchy. By disregarding the intentions of the artists, critics applied their own style and interpretation, which worked against these artists’ intents. Interpretive freedom of critics is not the issue, but some evaluations contributed to a history of sexism within art criticism, even if subtly.

In Conclusion Comparing the different approaches and careers of Frankenthaler and Schapiro results in a deeper understanding that cannot be achieved by considering them separately. Context is crucial when examining the past, and understanding the social context that shaped the documentation of women artists helps us to understand the barriers they faced. We must continuously reconsider the careers of women and reflect upon how the history of their documentation has affected the way that we conceive of their historical importance today. By bringing light to the problem of essentialist critique, and by noting its positive uses, such as its potential in forming a collective identity, we may reassess essentialist patterns sown into the careers of Frankenthaler and Schapiro. Analyzing this gendering heightens our awareness of the different consequences that misguided criticism had on their professional careers. I ultimately call attention to the way criticism clouded their legacies in order to restore and reemphasize artists’ objectives. Hopefully, this thoughtful reevaluation will inspire continued criticality in the historical documentation of all women artists and cultivate a more careful consideration of the reception of contemporary women artists.

Figure 1. Helen Frankenthaler, Nature Abhors a Vacuum, 1973, acrylic on canvas, 103 ½ x 112 ½ inches.

Figure 2. Miriam Schapiro, Anatomy of a Kimono, 1976, acrylic and collage on canvas, 10 panels, 6 ⅔ x 50 feet.

Figure 3. Miriam Schapiro, detail of Anatomy of a Kimono, 1976, acrylic and collage on canvas.

Figure 4. Miriam Schapiro and Marilyn Price, The Phoenix Heart, 1982, hand silkscreened cotton, 82 x 82 inches.

Figure 5. Miriam Schapiro, Mary Cassatt and Me, 1976, acrylic and collage on paper, 30 x 22 inches.

Figure 6. Helen Frankenthaler, Flood, 1967, acrylic on canvas, 124 x 140 inches.

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