Helen Frankenthaler’s Liberated Abstractions Charted a New Path for Painting

Helen Frankenthaler’s abstractions, often made by staining vibrant hues into unprimed canvas, have captured the minds of many, even if at one point, their aesthetic charm was once considered a demerit. “She is too proficient about beauty,” the critic Sanford Schwartz once wrote. On the occasion of a 1960 retrospective at the Jewish Museum, in a review that personally rankled Frankenthaler and her friends, ARTnews critic Anna Seelye wrote, “All of the paintings are nervous