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| Helen Frankenthaler Hotel Cro-Magnon 1958 oil on canvas Milwaukee Art Museum |
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| Helen Frankenthaler Untitled ca. 1962 lithograph Dallas Museum of Art |
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| Helen Frankenthaler Rock Pond 1962-63 acrylic on canvas Cincinnati Art Museum |
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| Helen Frankenthaler Canal 1963 acrylic on canvas Guggenheim Museum, New York |
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| Helen Frankenthaler The Bay 1963 acrylic on canvas Detroit Institute of Arts |
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| Helen Frankenthaler Orange Mood 1966 acrylic on canvas Whitney Museum of American Art, New York |
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| Helen Frankenthaler Tutti-Frutti 1966 acrylic on canvas Buffalo AKG Art Museum, New York |
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| Helen Frankenthaler Flood 1967 acrylic on canvas Whitney Museum of American Art, New York |
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| Helen Frankenthaler Sun Corner 1968 screenprint on metal Whitney Museum of American Art, New York |
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| Helen Frankenthaler Painting with Frame 1968 oil on canvas Seattle Art Museum |
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| Helen Frankenthaler Blessing of the Fleet 1969 acrylic on canvas Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC |
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| Helen Frankenthaler Draft 1969 acrylic on canvas Saint Louis Art Museum |
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| Helen Frankenthaler Lilac Arbor 1970 color aquatint Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC |
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| Helen Frankenthaler Cable 1971 acrylic on canvas Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri |
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| Helen Frankenthaler Gateway 1988 color aquatint, etching and pochoir Walker Art Center, Minneapolis |
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| Helen Frankenthaler Versailles 1989 acrylic on canvas Detroit Institute of Arts |
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| Helen Frankenthaler Bermuda High 1989 acrylic on canvas Saint Louis Art Museum |
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| Helen Frankenthaler Mirabelle 1990 lithograph Tate Modern, London |
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| Helen Frankenthaler Tales of Genji VI 1998 color woodblock print and pochoir Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC |
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| Helen Frankenthaler Southern Exposure 2005 screenprint Denver Art Museum |
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| Timothy Greenfield-Sanders Helen Frankenthaler 1981 gelatin silver print Whitney Museum of American Art, New York |
Approach of the Horizon
One morning I awoke unable to move my right arm.
I had periodically suffered from considerable
pain on that side, in my painting arm,
but in this instance there was no pain.
Indeed, there was no feeling.
My doctor arrived within the hour.
There was immediately the question of other doctors,
various tests, procedures –
I sent the doctor away
and instead hired the secretary who transcribes these notes,
whose skills, I am assured, are adequate to my needs.
He sits beside the bed with his head down,
possibly to avoid being described.
So we begin. There is sense
of gaiety in the air,
as though birds were singing.
Through the open window come gusts of sweet scented air.
My birthday (I remember) is fast approaching.
Perhaps the two great moments will collide
and I will see my selves meet, coming and going –
Of course, much of my original self
is already dead, so a ghost would be forced
to embrace a mutilation.
The sky, alas, is still far away,
not really visible from the bed.
It exists now as a remote hypothesis,
a place of freedom utterly unconstrained by reality.
I find myself imagining the triumphs of old age,
immaculate, visionary drawings
made with my left hand –
"left," also, as "remaining."
The window is closed. Silence again, multiplied.
And in my right arm, all feeling departed.
As when the stewardess announces the conclusion
of the audio portion of one's in-flight service.
Feeling has departed – it occurs to me
this would make a fine headstone.
But I was wrong to suggest
this has occurred before.
In fact, I have been hounded by feeling;
it is the gift of expression
that has so often failed me.
Failed me, tormented me, virtually all my life.
The secretary lifts his head,
filled with the abstract deference
the approach of death inspires.
It cannot help, really, but be thrilling,
this emerging of shape from chaos.
A machine, I see, has been installed by my bed
to inform my visitors
of my progress toward the horizon.
My own gaze keeps drifting toward it,
the unstable line gently
ascending, descending,
like a human voice in a lullaby.
And then the voice grows still.
At which point my soul will have merged
with the infinite, which is represented
by a straight line,
like a minus sign.
I have no heirs
in the sense that I have nothing of substance
to leave behind.
Possibly time will revise this disappointment.
Those who know me well will find no news here;
I sympathize.Those to whom
I am bound by affection
will forgive, I hope, the distortions
compelled by the occasion.
I will be brief. This concludes,
as the stewardess says,
our short flight.
And all the persons one will never know
crowd into the aisle, and all are funneled
into the terminal.
– Louise Glück (2014)