Helen Frankenthaler painting in 1969

Now that she has died, Helen Frankenthaler is being widely acclaimed by art critics and others, but remembered as a force for conservatives and responsible for the weakening of federal arts funding by others. In her New York Times “Critic’s Notebook“, Roberta Smith talks about Frankenthaler and John Chamberlain (who also died this week) saying each brought a, “new, unfettered approach to materials that pushed their respective mediums toward greater expressive freedom, unabashed physicality and a rough-edged, aggressively color-based beauty.”

Her husband, Jerry Saltz, tells us in his tribute in New York Magazine that, “not enough people have thought about the far-reaching accomplishments of Helen Frankenthaler, foremost inventor in the fifties of what is variously called American Color Field painting and post-painterly abstraction.”

Others, however, remember a darker side of Frankenthaler. The Los Angeles Times obituary reminds us that: “Frankenthaler did take a highly public stance during the late 1980s “culture wars” that eventually led to deep budget cuts for the National Endowment for the Arts and a ban on grants to individual artists that still persists. At the time, she was a presidential appointee to the National Council on the Arts, which advises the NEA’s chairman.”

“In a 1989 commentary for the New York Times, she wrote that, while ‘censorship and government interference in the directions and standards of art are dangerous and not part of the democratic process,’ controversial grants to Andres Serrano, Robert Mapplethorpe and others reflected a trend in which the NEA was supporting work “of increasingly dubious quality. Is the council, once a helping hand, now beginning to spawn an art monster? Do we lose art … in the guise of endorsing experimentation?”

In today’s New York Times, Roberta Smith makes an impassioned plea for the Folk Art Museum. She says New York needs to have access to its vast and unusual collection of objects and that it creates a counterpoint to the kinds of exhibitions shown at other institutions around town.  She criticizes the board of trustees for mismanagement and worse, but praises the exhibition program and curatorial bravery of the museum.  The current plan seems to be to sell off the collection to the Smithsonian or another institution, or even give the collection to one of them so that the trustees can just close the whole operation and get out of the business of folk art all together.

When a museum fails to pay its bills, fails to attract an audience, fails in every way but the art, what is the answer? One might ask the same questions about the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, another time-honored institution with a timid and unsophisiticated board of trustees who would rather sell off the collection than pony up the funds to keep the institution alive and whole.

Cy Twombly, the enigmatic, controversial, operatic artist is dead at age 83. I must say I have extremely mixed feelings about Twombly. I have been moved by some of his paintings, am bored by most of his sculpture, and despite some misgivings believe he was a very important and influential figure in 20th century art. However, having worked with him on an exhibition at the Whitney, I got to know him slightly and as my mother often told me, “If you don’t have anything nice to say, say nothing at all.” So, in this case, I will follow her advice. Here are some of the obits, reflections and appreciations that have been written over the past few days.

The Wall Street Journal

New York Times

LA Times

New York Times Appreciation

Jerry Saltz on Facebook