The Bay was painted in 1963 as Frankenthaler had refined her soak and stain process. While Mountains and Sea was made with diluted oil paints, The Bay is acrylic on unprimed canvas. She had found that using acrylics gave her greater control over the viscosity or how fluid the paint was. As I look at The Bay, the title indicates a landscape and the brightness, the organic shapes of blue and green give me a sense of a Bay, but it feels like it is more about a happy, contented sort of tone. There is movement, but it seems gentle like sitting out on a boat drifting in calm waters. The Bay represents a different sort of take on Abstract Expressionism. While many followed Jackson Pollock’s and Willem de Kooning’s aggressive and agsty style, Helen Frankenthaler’s color fields are more gentle and at peace. Her work was a breath of fresh air showing that painting could reduce art to fundamental elements in line with esoteric modernist philosophy and still be beautiful and joyous. 

Related episodes:

Jackson Pollock

Diego Rivera

Arts Madness 2025

Season 11 is all about my Arts Madness Tournament. Once again, I hope you will weigh in on your favorite artists/artworks as we go from 64 down to 1. For this year’s tournament, I put 32 works from the AP Art History list in one bracket, and on the other side, I have 32 artists/works from my personal “Salon des Refusés” that were not included in the curriculum. Voting for Round 1 will begin Monday, February 24. In the meantime, learn about all the different artists/artworks. I will be posting daily mini episodes for 64 days (mostly encore presentations with some updates and new episodes most Mondays).

Arts Madness 2025 links:

• The Brackets
• Vote in the Current Round

The Bay from 1963 is one of the required artworks for AP Art History. Check out my Spotify playlist, AP Art History Cram Session to learn about other artists and artworks from that curriculum.

Check out my other podcasts Art Smart and Rainbow Puppy Science Lab

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