A New Version of John Elderfield’s Helen Frankenthaler to be launched by Gagosian

An up to date version of John Elderfield’s Frankenthaler, initially revealed in 1989 and which many think about to be the definitive monograph on the artist, shall 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 concentrate on her late-Fifties to early-Nineteen 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 That includes over 300 full-color reproductions, together with beforehand unpublished works, in addition to greater than 100 documentary images and comparative illustrations.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 affords complete visible and scholarly perception into Frankenthaler’s profession.

Among the many extra fascinating anecdotes included within the new version 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 Fashionable Artwork, Frankenthaler left him a observe on the museum’s info desk. 

“They’re throwing me out,” the observe learn. “I can’t keep any longer. 9 pm alas. This can be a fan observe rapidly left on the desk to say, your Fauve present is nice, inspiring, mandatory (underlined 4 instances). Hold going sturdy.”

When requested how that observe sparked a collaboration that in the end led to the Frankenthaler the monograph, Elderfield stated Frankenthaler unabashedly adopted up just a few days afterward the telephone asking if he’d gotten her observe. After he replied within the affirmative she questioned why he hadn’t but reached out. “Properly, I put my telephone quantity on it,” she stated. Elderfield, solely barely flummoxed, stated 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 particular person and Frankenthaler got here ready. “Helen stated she had now learn my catalogue,” Elderfield writes within the new preface. “Fantastic, inspiring,” Frankenthaler advised him of the publication earlier than saying “and, I used to be questioning . . . would you want to put in writing a e-book about me?”

“Helen was all the time 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 in depth conversations with the artist. The up to date version permits Elderfield to debate her later profession in better depth, enriched by many years of analysis and the of eight posthumous Frankenthaler exhibitions he organized at Gagosian. 

The brand new version’s launch is timed to 2 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.