Sunset Corner

Sunset Corner is a 1969 acrylic painting by American artist Helen Frankenthaler.[1] The University of Michigan Museum of Art purchased it in 1973.[1]

In 2018, it was loaned to the Williams College Museum of Art for an exhibition called "Topographies of Color."[2] William Jaeger, writing for the Times Union, called the piece "a large, extraordinary work. . . dominated by a huge cascade of wan brick brown as it flows toward the bottom where other indistinct forms layer and grow in concentration to a kind of horizon. Your eyes want to linger in these last hard horizontal swaths, but you end up returning upward to the translucent dim 'sky' because it is so vast."[2]

From 2018 to 2020, it has been on display at the University of Michigan Museum of Art for all three parts of a series of exhibitions called Abstraction, Color, and Politics, curated by museum director Christina Olsen.[3][4][5][6]

Background

Frankenthaler was active in the Color Field movement, and Sunset Corner features highly saturated blocks and swathes of shades of orange and gold.[1] Frankenthaler painted it using her "soak-stain" method.[7]

Influence

Linda Gregerson's poem "Bleedthrough" (published in 1996) is inspired by this painting.[8][9] Karl Kirchwey writes, "What is described is the effect of looking at the world through closed eyelids; in bright light, this results in just the blood-tinged wash that Frankenthaler's painting depicts."[8] Another writer, for the Michigan Daily, noted its possible representation of menstrual blood.[10]

References
  1. "Exchange: Sunset Corner". exchange.umma.umich.edu. Retrieved 2020-08-28.
  2. Jaeger, William (2018-08-15). "Williams College exhibit salutes color field painters". Times Union. Retrieved 2020-08-28.
  3. "Abstraction, Color, and Politics in the Early 1970s, University of Michigan Museum of Art". umma.umich.edu. Retrieved 2020-08-28.
  4. "Abstraction, Color, and Politics, University of Michigan Museum of Art". umma.umich.edu. Retrieved 2020-08-28.
  5. "Abstraction, Color, and Politics in the 60s and 70s: Kaleidoscope, University of Michigan Museum of Art". umma.umich.edu. Retrieved 2020-08-28.
  6. Porter, Christopher (17 April 2019). "Large-Scale Statements: Abstraction, Color, and Politics in the Early 1970s at UMMA | Ann Arbor District Library". aadl.org. Retrieved 2020-09-02.
  7. "Abstraction & Politics @ UMMA – Detroit Art Review". Retrieved 2020-08-28.
  8. Hedley, Jane; Halpern, Nick; Spiegelman, Willard (2009). In the Frame: Women's Ekphrastic Poetry from Marianne Moore to Susan Wheeler. University of Delaware Press. ISBN 978-0-87413-046-1.
  9. Denham, Robert D. (2010-03-10). Poets on Paintings: A Bibliography. McFarland. ISBN 978-0-7864-5658-1.
  10. Writer, Jenna Barlage Daily Arts. "'Art, Abstraction, and Politics in the Early 1970s, Apolitical art as inherently political". The Michigan Daily. Retrieved 2020-08-28.
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