Alexander Osborne
Stu- 188086
Tutor- Bill
For the following Visual Analysis essay, I have chosen the two following pieces of artwork, Helen Frankenthaler’s Untitled piece from 1982 and Georgia O’Keefe’s Red Hills 1927 (Red Hills with Sun). I am going to compare, relate and analyse both pieces in detail.
The first piece is by the female Wisconsin born Abstract Expressionist artist, Georgia O’Keefe, named Red Hills. It depicts the Autumn landscape of Lake George located in the Adirondack Mountains of New York. The Oil painting I feel is a very vibrant and warm piece, which I believe has been achieved through the use of burning and earthly tones that belong to the ‘Warm’ pallet of colours ( Yellows, Greenish Yellows, Oranges, Browns and Reds ). On some sections of the painting, she has used an effective wash technique, the main example of this would be the sky and sun. This technique was carried out by watering down the Oil paints using a chemical thinner, which is then applied to a damp canvas.
I rather enjoy the contrast between the solid red colour of the mountain plain, up against the lighter and more translucent colours of the sky. I feel it gives the painting real depth and texture, that would otherwise been lost by using just one painting technique. It’s essential when using Oil paints on canvas, that the canvas is primed correctly, otherwise the chemicals within the Oil paints will eventually corrode and rot canvas material.
The second piece is by another female artist, the New York born Helen Frankenthaler. Helen was a pioneer of the colour field movement, which is associated with the second - generation abstract expressionists. She primarily draws from landscapes for her inspiration, this Untitled landscape piece reflects her inspiration in a very abstract way. I feel the piece has a rather cool and fresh feel to it. With the use cold blue colours and tranquil tones that considerably contribute to the cool feel of the piece, combined with her ‘field’ painting style plus her mastered ‘soak- stain’ painting technique, the resulting look to the painting is very refreshing to the eye and visually has a very silky smooth texture to it.
She uses thinned down Acrylic paint that is applied onto a damp un - primed canvas to create her soak - stain paintings. By restricting the application of water to certain parts of the canvas ( for example in this piece, the upper white section of the painting ) she was able to control the areas in which the liquefied Acrylic will bleed into. Applying more or less water and Acrylic to certain sections of the painting controlled the overall texture of this piece.
In comparison, both pieces are paintings, but on opposite sides of the scale. Georgia O’Keefe’s Red Hills is a very warm painting which uses colours from the ‘Warm’ pallet of colours, and Helen Frankenthaler’s uses colours from the ’Cold’ pallet. Both paintings fall into Abstract, but Helen’s painting is much more expressionistic compared to more traditionally painted modernist painting of O’Keefe. Because of this, the viewer of O’Keefe’s Red Hills, needs not look into the painting as hard, but may need to look at Helen’s piece with a bit more depth to discover its true meaning. In the 1960’s, O’Keefe switched to using Acrylics, which she used in this painting, whilst Helen stuck to using the more traditional and more established at the time Oil paints. Even though they are painted using different mediums and colours, they do share an element of texture. The washed effect on the sky in O’Keefe’s piece, I feel can also be put into the same tribute as the stained effect that features on Helen’s piece.
Overall, it would be hard to chose between the piece I like the most, it would probably be Red Hills due to its simplistic but detailed quality compared to the Untitled pieces which is more cruder but still at the same time is also simplistic.
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