Canvas is an extremely durable plain-woven fabric used for making sails , tents , marquees , backpacks , shelters , as a support for oil painting and for other items for which sturdiness is required, as well as in such fashion objects as handbags, electronic device cases, and shoes. It is popularly used by artists as a painting surface, typically stretched across a wooden frame.
130-468: Modern canvas is usually made of cotton or linen , or sometimes polyvinyl chloride (PVC), although historically it was made from hemp . It differs from other heavy cotton fabrics, such as denim , in being plain weave rather than twill weave . Canvas comes in two basic types: plain and duck . The threads in duck canvas are more tightly woven. The term duck comes from the Dutch word for cloth, doek . In
260-639: A cardboard backing, and sealed on the backside. The canvas is typically linen primed for a certain type of paint. They are primarily used by artists for quick studies . Understanding the mechanical properties of art canvases is necessary for art conservation, especially when deciding on transporting paintings, conservation treatments and environmental specifications inside museums. Canvases are layered structures made from weaving fibers together, where each layer responds differently to changes in humidity, resulting in localized stresses that cause deformation , cracking , and delamination . There are two directions to
390-407: A rabbit skin glue ground ; a variation using titanium white pigment and calcium carbonate is rather brittle and susceptible to cracking. As lead-based paint is poisonous, care has to be taken in using it. Various alternative and more flexible canvas primers are commercially available, the most popular being a synthetic latex paint composed of titanium dioxide and calcium carbonate , bound with
520-620: A collections-focused group exhibition at the Pérez Art Museum Miami , Florida, showcased Frankenthaler's work in the collection alongside Julie Mehretu, Jules Olitski, and Louis Morris, among others. She was a presidential appointee to the National Council on the Arts, which advises the NEA's chairman. In The New York Times in 1989, she argued government funding for the arts was "not part of
650-538: A commercial chain in which raw cotton fibers were (at first) purchased from colonial plantations , processed into cotton cloth in the mills of Lancashire , and then exported on British ships to captive colonial markets in West Africa , India , and China (via Shanghai and Hong Kong). By the 1840s, India was no longer capable of supplying the vast quantities of cotton fibers needed by mechanized British factories, while shipping bulky, low-price cotton from India to Britain
780-506: A curator at the Museum of Modern Art, was at the Jewish Museum in 1960. Subsequent solo exhibitions include "Helen Frankenthaler," Whitney Museum of American Art , New York (1969; traveled to Whitechapel Gallery , London; Orangerie Herrenhausen , Hanover; and Kongresshalle , Berlin), and "Helen Frankenthaler: a Painting Retrospective," The Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth (1989–90; traveled to
910-571: A decade after her death the New Britain Museum of American Art mounted an exhibition of her works on paper from the final stages of her opus titled "Helen Frankenthaler; Late Works 1990 - 2003". In 2023 her work was included in the exhibition Action, Gesture, Paint: Women Artists and Global Abstraction 1940-1970 at the Whitechapel Gallery in London. Every Sound Is a Shape of Time ,
1040-704: A deficit spiral that led to the country declaring bankruptcy in 1876, a key factor behind Egypt's occupation by the British Empire in 1882 . During this time, cotton cultivation in the British Empire , especially Australia and India, greatly increased to replace the lost production of the American South. Through tariffs and other restrictions, the British government discouraged the production of cotton cloth in India; rather,
1170-607: A farmer who farmed one of the biggest cotton operations. He produced over sixty thousand bales. Cotton remained a key crop in the Southern economy after slavery ended in 1865. Across the South, sharecropping evolved, in which landless farmers worked land owned by others in return for a share of the profits. Some farmers rented the land and bore the production costs themselves. Until mechanical cotton pickers were developed, cotton farmers needed additional labor to hand-pick cotton. Picking cotton
1300-423: A feminist: "For me, being a 'lady painter' was never an issue. I don't resent being a female painter. I don't exploit it. I paint." Mary Beth Edelson 's feminist piece Some Living American Women Artists / Last Supper (1972) appropriated Leonardo da Vinci ’s The Last Supper , with the heads of notable women artists including Frankenthaler collaged over the heads of Christ and his apostles. This image, addressing
1430-521: A find in Ancon, to c. 4200 BC , and was the backbone of the development of coastal cultures such as the Norte Chico , Moche , and Nazca . Cotton was grown upriver, made into nets, and traded with fishing villages along the coast for large supplies of fish. The Spanish who came to Mexico and Peru in the early 16th century found the people growing cotton and wearing clothing made of it. The Greeks and
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#17328513797791560-623: A five-year relationship with him. She married the painter Robert Motherwell in 1958; the couple divorced in 1971. Both born of wealthy parents, they were known as "the golden couple" and for their lavish entertaining. She gained two stepdaughters from him, Jeannie Motherwell and Lise Motherwell. Jeannie Motherwell studied painting at Bard College and the Art Students League in New York and had several exhibits. In 1994, Frankenthaler married Stephen M. DuBrul, Jr., an investment banker who served
1690-484: A great deal of resources would have been required, likely restricting its cultivation to the elite. In the first to third centuries CE, recovered cotton fragments all began to mirror the same style and production method, as seen from the direction of spun cotton and technique of weaving. Cotton textiles also appear in places of high regard, such as on funerary stelae and statues. During the Han dynasty (207 BC - 220 AD), cotton
1820-461: A kind of seascape or landscape, like the strokes of blue that join with areas of green. Much like Mountains and Sea , Frankenthaler's Basque Landscape (1958) seems to refer to a very specific, external environment, but it is also abstract. The same can be said for Lorelei (1956), a work based on a boat ride Frankenthaler took down the Rhine. Swan Lake #2 (1961) depicts a large area of blue paint on
1950-490: A landscape never could be. The work is almost entirely gestural, save for the incorporation of the number "100" two times in the center of the image. When asked about the process of creating this work, Frankenthaler stated that she began by painting the numbers, and that a sort of symbolic, idealized garden grew out of that. Frankenthaler recognized a need to continually challenge herself to develop as an artist. For this reason, in 1961, she began to experiment with printmaking at
2080-450: A more economical alternative. The advent of acrylic paint has greatly increased the popularity and use of cotton duck canvas. Linen and cotton derive from two entirely different plants, the flax plant and the cotton plant, respectively. Gessoed canvases on stretchers are also available. They are available in a variety of weights: light-weight is about 4 oz/sq yd (140 g/m) or 5 oz/sq yd (170 g/m); medium-weight
2210-422: A new market for British goods, while the capital amassed from Bengal after its 1757 conquest was used to invest in British industries such as textile manufacturing and greatly increase British wealth. British colonization also forced open the large Indian market to British goods, which could be sold in India without tariffs or duties , compared to local Indian producers who were heavily taxed , while raw cotton
2340-494: A new revenue system that was biased in favour of higher value cash crops such as cotton and indigo , providing state incentives to grow cash crops, in addition to rising market demand. The largest manufacturing industry in the Mughal Empire was cotton textile manufacturing , which included the production of piece goods , calicos , and muslins , available unbleached and in a variety of colours. The cotton textile industry
2470-614: A number of other cotton seed companies selling GM cotton around the world. About 62% of the GM cotton grown from 1996 to 2011 was insect resistant, 24% stacked product and 14% herbicide resistant. Cotton has gossypol , a toxin that makes it inedible. However, scientists have silenced the gene that produces the toxin, making it a potential food crop. On 17 October 2018, the USDA deregulated GE low-gossypol cotton. Helen Frankenthaler Helen Frankenthaler (December 12, 1928 – December 27, 2011)
2600-447: A painstaking, months-long process of layering the raw canvas with (usually) lead-white paint, then polishing the surface, and then repeating. The final product had little resemblance to fabric, but instead had a glossy, enamel-like finish. With a properly prepared canvas, the painter will find that each subsequent layer of color glides on in a "buttery" manner, and that with the proper consistency of application ( fat over lean technique),
2730-406: A painting entirely devoid of brushstrokes can be achieved. A warm iron is applied over a piece of wet cotton to flatten the wrinkles. Canvas can also be printed on using offset or specialist digital printers to create canvas prints . This process of digital inkjet printing is popularly referred to as Giclée . After printing, the canvas can be wrapped around a stretcher and displayed. Canvas
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#17328513797792860-753: A personal friendship and who included her in the Post-Painterly Abstraction exhibition that he curated in 1964. Through Greenberg she was introduced to the New York art scene. Under his guidance she spent the summer of 1950 studying with Hans Hofmann (1880–1966), catalyst of the Abstract Expressionist movement . The first Jackson Pollock show Frankenthaler saw was at the Betty Parsons Gallery in 1950. She had this to say about seeing Pollock's paintings Autumn Rhythm, Number 30, 1950 (1950), Number One,1950 (Lavender Mist) (1950): It
2990-425: A piece of painting to create the samples (required length of 250 mm), therefore the traditional methods of assessing mechanical properties have been visual cues and pH values. Art conservationists have recently adopted a new method called zero-span strength analysis, nanoindentation, and numerical modelling to quantitatively evaluate the mechanical properties of painting canvases. Zero-span strength analysis measures
3120-403: A thermo-plastic emulsion. Many artists have painted onto unprimed canvas, such as Jackson Pollock , Kenneth Noland , Francis Bacon , Helen Frankenthaler , Dan Christensen , Larry Zox , Ronnie Landfield , Color Field painters, Lyrical Abstractionists and others. Staining acrylic paint into the fabric of cotton duck canvas was more benign and less damaging to the fabric of the canvas than
3250-539: Is 180 MPa, which drops to 13 MPa at 90% relative humidity, suggesting that canvas is becoming more flexible and susceptible to deformation. There is an inherent anisotropy to the elastic modulus measured in the weft and warp direction as evidenced in the strain vs. load behavior of the canvas. The canvas exhibits a 0.1 strain in the weft direction and 0.2 strain in the warp direction before failing (thread ripping apart). Though, tensile testing provides an explicit measure of material strength, conservationists are unable to tare
3380-413: Is a popular base fabric for embroidery such as cross-stitch and Berlin wool work . Some specific types of embroidery canvases are Aida cloth (also called Java canvas), Penelope canvas, Chess canvas, and Binca canvas. Plastic canvas is a stiffer form of Binca canvas. From the 13th century onwards, canvas was used as a covering layer on pavise shields. The canvas was applied to the wooden surface of
3510-459: Is about 7 oz/sq yd (240 g/m) or 8 oz/sq yd (270 g/m); heavy-weight is about 10 oz/sq yd (340 g/m) or 12 oz/sq yd (410 g/m). They are prepared with two or three coats of gesso and are ready for use straight away. Artists desiring greater control of their painting surface may add a coat or two of their preferred gesso. Professional artists who wish to work on canvas may prepare their own canvas in
3640-466: Is attached with a spline at the rear of the frame. This allows the artist to incorporate painted edges into the artwork itself without staples at the sides, and the artwork can be displayed without a frame. Splined canvas can be restretched by adjusting the spline. Stapled canvases stay stretched tighter over a longer period of time, but are more difficult to re-stretch when the need arises. Canvas boards are made of canvas stretched over and glued to
3770-712: Is found in Mexico, followed by Australia and Africa. Cotton was independently domesticated in the Old and New Worlds. The fiber is most often spun into yarn or thread and used to make a soft, breathable , and durable textile . The use of cotton for fabric is known to date to prehistoric times; fragments of cotton fabric dated to the fifth millennium BC have been found in the Indus Valley civilization , as well as fabric remnants dated back to 4200 BC in Peru . Although cultivated since antiquity, it
3900-506: Is freer in a way but less free in another way, since one is a captive of this necessity and deep urge". In 1960, the term color field painting was used to describe the work of Frankenthaler. In general, this term refers to the application of large areas, or fields, of color to the canvas. This style was characterized by the use of hues that were similar in tone or intensity, as well as large formats and simplified compositions, all of which are qualities descriptive of Frankenthaler's work from
4030-607: Is ineffective against many cotton pests, such as plant bugs , stink bugs , and aphids ; depending on circumstances it may still be desirable to use insecticides against these. A 2006 study done by Cornell researchers, the Center for Chinese Agricultural Policy and the Chinese Academy of Science on Bt cotton farming in China found that after seven years these secondary pests that were normally controlled by pesticide had increased, necessitating
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4160-424: Is notable in its emphasis on spontaneity, as Frankenthaler herself stated, "A really good picture looks as if it's happened at once." Frankenthaler's official artistic career was launched in 1952 with the exhibition of Mountains and Sea . Throughout the 1950s, her works tended to be centered compositions. In 1957, Frankenthaler began to experiment with linear shapes and more organic, sun-like, rounded forms. In
4290-423: Is synchronized with your head and heart, and you have it, and therefore it looks as if it were born in a minute. John Elderfield wrote that the watercolors of Paul Cézanne and John Marin were important early influences: Watercolor... expands the brightness and flatness of plein-air painting because it visibly reveals these qualities in the whiteness of its support, which always makes its presence felt due to
4420-559: Is the domestication of Gossypium hirsutum in Mexico between around 3400 and 2300 BC. During this time, people between the Río Santiago and the Río Balsas grew, spun, wove, dyed, and sewed cotton. What they did not use themselves, they sent to their Aztec rulers as tribute, on the scale of ~116 million pounds (53,000 tonnes) annually. In Peru , cultivation of the indigenous cotton species Gossypium barbadense has been dated, from
4550-581: The Dalton School under muralist Rufino Tamayo and also at Bennington College in Vermont. While at Bennington, Frankenthaler studied under the direction of Paul Feeley , who is credited with helping her understand pictorial composition, as well as influencing her early cubist-derived style. Upon her graduation in 1949, she studied privately with Australian-born painter Wallace Harrison, and with Hans Hofmann in 1950. She met Clement Greenberg in 1950 and had
4680-623: The Deep South . To acknowledge cotton's place in the history and heritage of Texas, the Texas Legislature designated cotton the official "State Fiber and Fabric of Texas" in 1997. China's Chang'e 4 spacecraft took cotton seeds to the Moon's far side . On 15 January 2019, China announced that a cotton seed sprouted, the first "truly otherworldly plant in history". Inside the Von Kármán Crater ,
4810-466: The Delhi Sultanate . During the late medieval period, cotton became known as an imported fiber in northern Europe, without any knowledge of how it was derived, other than that it was a plant. Because Herodotus had written in his Histories , Book III, 106, that in India trees grew in the wild producing wool, it was assumed that the plant was a tree, rather than a shrub. This aspect is retained in
4940-855: The Denver Art Museum . On October 6, 2019, Frankenthaler was included in Sparkling Amazons: Abstract Expressionist Women of the 9th St. Show at the Katonah Museum of Art in Westchester County, NY. which ran until January 26, 2020; *2019: "Postwar Women: alumnae of the Art Students League of New York 1945-1965", Phyllis Harriman Gallery, Art Students League of NY; curated by Will Corwin.; 2020: "9th Street Club", Gazelli Art House, London; curated by Will Corwin In 2021,
5070-504: The Gerald Ford administration . Active as a painter for nearly six decades, Frankenthaler passed through many phases and stylistic shifts. Initially associated with abstract expressionism because of her focus on forms latent in nature, Frankenthaler is identified with the use of fluid shapes, abstract masses, and lyrical gestures. She made use of large formats on which she painted, generally, simplified abstract compositions. Her style
5200-518: The Industrial Revolution in Britain provided a great boost to cotton manufacture, as textiles emerged as Britain's leading export. In 1738, Lewis Paul and John Wyatt , of Birmingham , England, patented the roller spinning machine, as well as the flyer-and-bobbin system for drawing cotton to a more even thickness using two sets of rollers that traveled at different speeds. Later, the invention of
5330-461: The James Hargreaves ' spinning jenny in 1764, Richard Arkwright 's spinning frame in 1769 and Samuel Crompton 's spinning mule in 1775 enabled British spinners to produce cotton yarn at much higher rates. From the late 18th century on, the British city of Manchester acquired the nickname " Cottonopolis " due to the cotton industry's omnipresence within the city, and Manchester's role as
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5460-708: The Museum of Modern Art in New York City, and been exhibited worldwide since the 1950s. In 2001, she was awarded the National Medal of Arts . Frankenthaler had a home and studio in Darien, Connecticut . Helen Frankenthaler was born on December 12, 1928, in New York City . Her father was Alfred Frankenthaler , a New York State Supreme Court judge. Her mother, Martha (Lowenstein), had emigrated with her family from Germany to
5590-436: The Museum of Modern Art , New York; Los Angeles County Museum of Art ; and Detroit Institute of Arts ). Miles McEnery Gallery, a New York-based contemporary art gallery which exhibited Color-Field and Abstract Expressionist paintings, showcased a range of her work in 2009 "Helen Frankenthaler," December 10, 2009 – January 23, 2010). In 2016 her work was included in the exhibition Women of Abstract Expressionism organized by
5720-694: The Neolithic site of Mehrgarh , at the foot of the Bolan Pass in ancient India , today in Balochistan Pakistan. Fragments of cotton textiles have been found at Mohenjo-daro and other sites of the Bronze Age Indus Valley civilization , and cotton may have been an important export from it. Cotton bolls discovered in a cave near Tehuacán , Mexico, have been dated to as early as 5500 BC, but this date has been challenged. More securely dated
5850-579: The United States , canvas is classified in two ways: by weight (ounces per square yard) and by a graded number system. The numbers run in reverse of the weight so a number 10 canvas is lighter than number 4. The word "canvas" is derived from the 13th century Anglo-French canevaz and the Old French canevas . Both may be derivatives of the Vulgar Latin cannapaceus for "made of hemp ", originating from
5980-500: The tensile strength of materials, such as paper and yarns, by reducing the clamping distance to 0.1 mm and applying load to a particular point on the yarn. This minimizes effects from material geometry and accurately assesses intrinsic fiber strength. This also reduces the amount of material needed for samples to 60 mm. Using zero-span strength analysis, conservationists measured tensile strength of flax, commonly used canvas material in historical paintings and correlated tensile strength to
6110-535: The 1480s was still unusual for the period. Large paintings for country houses were apparently more likely to be on canvas, and are perhaps less likely to have survived. It was a good deal cheaper than a panel painting, and may sometime indicate a painting regarded as less important. In the Uccello, the armour does not use silver leaf, as other of his paintings do (and the colour therefore remains undegraded). Another common category of paintings on lighter cloth such as linen
6240-503: The 1840s. Indian cotton textiles, particularly those from Bengal , continued to maintain a competitive advantage up until the 19th century. In order to compete with India, Britain invested in labour-saving technical progress, while implementing protectionist policies such as bans and tariffs to restrict Indian imports. At the same time, the East India Company's rule in India contributed to its deindustrialization , opening up
6370-455: The 1960s onward. The color field artists differed from abstract expressionists in their attempted erasure of emotional, mythic, and religious content. Frankenthaler often painted onto unprimed canvas with oil paints that she heavily diluted with turpentine, a technique that she named "soak stain." This allowed for the colors to soak directly into the canvas, creating a liquefied, translucent effect that strongly resembled watercolor. Soak stain
6500-468: The 1960s, her style shifted towards the exploration of symmetrical paintings, as she began to place strips of colors near the edges of her paintings. Her style grew to be more simplified. She began to make use of single stains and blots of solid color against white backgrounds, often in the form of geometric shapes. Beginning in 1963, Frankenthaler began to use acrylic paints rather than oil paints because they allowed for both opacity and sharpness when put on
6630-499: The 19th century. India's cotton-processing sector changed during EIC expansion in India in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. From focusing on supplying the British market to supplying East Asia with raw cotton. As the Artisan produced textiles were no longer competitive with those produced Industrially, and Europe preferring the cheaper slave produced, long staple American, and Egyptian cottons, for its own materials. The advent of
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#17328513797796760-683: The Arabs were not familiar with cotton until the Wars of Alexander the Great , as his contemporary Megasthenes told Seleucus I Nicator of "there being trees on which wool grows" in "Indica." This may be a reference to "tree cotton", Gossypium arboreum , which is native to the Indian subcontinent. According to the Columbia Encyclopedia : Cotton has been spun, woven, and dyed since prehistoric times. It clothed
6890-661: The British to cheap calico and chintz cloth on the restoration of the monarchy in the 1660s. Initially imported as a novelty side line, from its spice trading posts in Asia, the cheap colourful cloth proved popular and overtook the EIC's spice trade by value in the late 17th century. The EIC embraced the demand, particularly for calico , by expanding its factories in Asia and producing and importing cloth in bulk, creating competition for domestic woollen and linen textile producers. The impacted weavers, spinners, dyers, shepherds and farmers objected and
7020-615: The Egyptian cotton industry. By the time of the American Civil war annual exports had reached $ 16 million (120,000 bales), which rose to $ 56 million by 1864, primarily due to the loss of the Confederate supply on the world market. Exports continued to grow even after the reintroduction of US cotton, produced now by a paid workforce, and Egyptian exports reached 1.2 million bales a year by 1903. The English East India Company (EIC) introduced
7150-704: The Greek κάνναβις ( cannabis ). Canvas has become the most common support medium for oil painting , replacing wooden panels . It was used from the 14th century in Italy, but only rarely. One of the earliest surviving oils on canvas is a French Madonna with angels from around 1410 in the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin . Its use in Saint George and the Dragon by Paolo Uccello in about 1470, and Sandro Botticelli 's Birth of Venus in
7280-491: The Mughal era. It was reported that, with an Indian cotton gin, which is half machine and half tool, one man and one woman could clean 28 pounds (13 kg) of cotton per day. With a modified Forbes version, one man and a boy could produce 250 pounds (110 kg) per day. If oxen were used to power 16 of these machines, and a few people's labour was used to feed them, they could produce as much work as 750 people did formerly. In
7410-463: The Northern and Southern hemispheres, but a large proportion of the cotton grown today is cultivated in areas with less rainfall that obtain the water from irrigation. Production of the crop for a given year usually starts soon after harvesting the preceding autumn. Cotton is naturally a perennial but is grown as an annual to help control pests. Planting time in spring in the Northern hemisphere varies from
7540-495: The United States as an infant. Helen's two sisters, Marjorie and Gloria , were six and five years older, respectively. Growing up on Manhattan's Upper East Side , Frankenthaler absorbed the privileged background of a cultured and progressive Jewish intellectual family that encouraged all three daughters to prepare themselves for professional careers. Her nephew is the artist/photographer Clifford Ross . Frankenthaler studied at
7670-473: The United States, even with the use of humans as slave labor. The gin that Whitney manufactured (the Holmes design) reduced the hours down to just a dozen or so per bale. Although Whitney patented his own design for a cotton gin, he manufactured a prior design from Henry Odgen Holmes, for which Holmes filed a patent in 1796. Improving technology and increasing control of world markets allowed British traders to develop
7800-556: The Universal Limited Art Editions (ULAE), a lithographic workshop in West Islip, Long Island. Frankenthaler collaborated with Tatyana Grosman in 1961 to create her first prints. In 1976, Frankenthaler began to work within the medium of woodcuts. She collaborated with Kenneth E. Tyler . The first piece they created together was Essence of Mulberry (1977), a woodcut that used eight different colors. Essence of Mulberry
7930-400: The actual strength of the canvas itself. Lastly, conservationists are using finite element modeling ( FEM ) and extended-FEM ( XFEM ) on canvases undergoing desiccation (removal of moisture) to visualize the global and local stresses. Cotton Cotton (from Arabic al-qutn ) is a soft, fluffy staple fiber that grows in a boll , or protective case, around the seeds of
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#17328513797798060-578: The backbone of the southern American economy. In the United States, cultivating and harvesting cotton became the leading occupation of slaves . During the American Civil War , American cotton exports slumped due to a Union blockade on Southern ports , and because of a strategic decision by the Confederate government to cut exports, hoping to force Britain to recognize the Confederacy or enter
8190-424: The basis of a new indigenous industry, initially producing Fustian for the domestic market, though more importantly triggering the development of a series of mechanised spinning and weaving technologies, to process the material. This mechanised production was concentrated in new cotton mills , which slowly expanded until by the beginning of the 1770s seven thousand bales of cotton were imported annually, and pressure
8320-631: The beginning of February to the beginning of June. The area of the United States known as the South Plains is the largest contiguous cotton-growing region in the world. While dryland (non-irrigated) cotton is successfully grown in this region, consistent yields are only produced with heavy reliance on irrigation water drawn from the Ogallala Aquifer . Since cotton is somewhat salt and drought tolerant, this makes it an attractive crop for arid and semiarid regions. As water resources get tighter around
8450-542: The board exploited the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation “to advance their own personal interests and careers” and were committed to completely shutting down the foundation in the near future. Frankenthaler's first solo exhibition took place at the Tibor de Nagy Gallery , New York, in the fall of 1951. Her first major museum show, a retrospective of her 1950s work with a catalog by the critic and poet Frank O'Hara ,
8580-434: The calico question became one of the major issues of National politics between the 1680s and the 1730s. Parliament began to see a decline in domestic textile sales, and an increase in imported textiles from places like China and India . Seeing the East India Company and their textile importation as a threat to domestic textile businesses, Parliament passed the 1700 Calico Act, blocking the importation of cotton cloth. As there
8710-443: The canvas, with breaks in the color that are left white. A rectilinear brown square encompasses the blue, balancing both the cool tones of the blue with the warmth of the brown, and the gestural handling of the paint with the strong linearity of the square. Eden , from 1956, is an interior landscape, meaning it depicts the images of the artist's imagination. Eden tells the story of an abstract, interior world, idealized in ways that
8840-499: The canvas. By the 1970s, she had done away with the soak stain technique entirely, preferring thicker paint that allowed her to employ bright colors almost reminiscent of Fauvism . Throughout the 1970s, Frankenthaler explored the joining of areas of the canvas through the use of modulated hues, and experimented with large, abstract forms. Her work in the 1980s was characterized as much calmer, with its use of muted colors and relaxed brushwork. "Once one's true talent begins to emerge, one
8970-403: The canvas: the warp direction (threads run vertically) and the weft direction (threads run horizontally). Researchers performed tensile testing to determine the effects of humidity on the strength of canvases and observed that increasing humidity decreased the effective elastic modulus (combined modulus of the weft and warp directions). For example, the effective modulus at 30% relative humidity
9100-475: The capsule and seeds sit inside the Chang'e 4 lander. Successful cultivation of cotton requires a long frost -free period, plenty of sunshine, and a moderate rainfall, usually from 50 to 100 cm (19.5 to 39.5 in). Soils usually need to be fairly heavy , although the level of nutrients does not need to be exceptional. In general, these conditions are met within the seasonally dry tropics and subtropics in
9230-439: The change; Venetian sail canvas was readily available and regarded as the best quality. Canvas is usually stretched across a wooden frame called a stretcher and may be coated with gesso prior to being used to prevent oil paint from coming into direct contact with the canvas fibres which would eventually cause the canvas to decay. A traditional and flexible chalk gesso is composed of lead carbonate and linseed oil, applied over
9360-400: The color field school of painting. Frankenthaler often worked by laying her canvas out on the floor, a technique inspired by Jackson Pollock . Frankenthaler preferred to paint in privacy. If assistants were present, she preferred them to be inconspicuous when not needed. One of her most important influences was Clement Greenberg (1909–1994), an art and literary critic with whom she had
9490-511: The cotton plants of the genus Gossypium in the mallow family Malvaceae . The fiber is almost pure cellulose , and can contain minor percentages of waxes , fats , pectins , and water . Under natural conditions, the cotton bolls will increase the dispersal of the seeds. The plant is a shrub native to tropical and subtropical regions around the world, including the Americas, Africa, Egypt and India. The greatest diversity of wild cotton species
9620-432: The critic Barbara Rose, who wrote in 1972 of Ms. Frankenthaler's gift for "the freedom, spontaneity, openness and complexity of an image, not exclusively of the studio or the mind, but explicitly and intimately tied to nature and human emotions. The New York-based Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, established and endowed by the artist during her lifetime, is dedicated to promoting greater public interest in and understanding of
9750-400: The degree of cellulose depolymerization -- cellulose is a component of flax. Another method for assessing canvas quality is nanoindentation utilizing a millimeter-sized cantilever with a microsphere at its end and measuring local viscoelastic properties . However, with the nanoindentation method, conservationists can probe the composite behavior of the layers of paint on top of the canvas, not
9880-567: The democratic process" and was "beginning to spawn an art monster". According to the Los Angeles Times , "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. In a 1989 commentary for The New York Times , she wrote that, while "censorship and government interference in
10010-442: 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?" Frankenthaler died on December 27, 2011, at
10140-548: The dual-roller gin was prevalent throughout the Mediterranean cotton trade by the 16th century. This mechanical device was, in some areas, driven by water power. The earliest clear illustrations of the spinning wheel come from the Islamic world in the eleventh century. The earliest unambiguous reference to a spinning wheel in India is dated to 1350, suggesting that the spinning wheel was likely introduced from Iran to India during
10270-472: The early 1950s. She was included in the 1964 Post-Painterly Abstraction exhibition curated by Clement Greenberg that introduced a newer generation of abstract painting that came to be known as color field . Born in Manhattan , she was influenced by Greenberg, Hans Hofmann , and Jackson Pollock 's paintings. Her work has been the subject of several retrospective exhibitions, including a 1989 retrospective at
10400-514: The early 19th century had the fifth most productive cotton industry in the world, in terms of the number of spindles per capita. The industry was initially driven by machinery that relied on traditional energy sources, such as animal power , water wheels , and windmills , which were also the principal energy sources in Western Europe up until around 1870. It was under Muhammad Ali in the early 19th century that steam engines were introduced to
10530-636: The early 19th century, a Frenchman named M. Jumel proposed to the great ruler of Egypt, Mohamed Ali Pasha , that he could earn a substantial income by growing an extra-long staple Maho ( Gossypium barbadense ) cotton, in Lower Egypt , for the French market. Mohamed Ali Pasha accepted the proposition and granted himself the monopoly on the sale and export of cotton in Egypt ; and later dictated cotton should be grown in preference to other crops. Egypt under Muhammad Ali in
10660-579: The endes of its branches. These branches were so pliable that they bent down to allow the lambs to feed when they are hungry." (See Vegetable Lamb of Tartary .) Cotton manufacture was introduced to Europe during the Muslim conquest of the Iberian Peninsula and Sicily . The knowledge of cotton weaving was spread to northern Italy in the 12th century, when Sicily was conquered by the Normans , and consequently to
10790-552: The first Paris Biennial (1959); Temple Gold Medal , Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts , Philadelphia (1968); New York City Mayor's Award of Honor for Arts and Culture (1986); and Distinguished Artist Award for Lifetime Achievement, College Art Association (1994). In 1990, she was elected into the National Academy of Design as an Associate member, and became a full Academician in 1994. Frankenthaler did not consider herself
10920-531: The fourth largest GM cotton crop area of 2.6 million hectares in 2011. The initial introduction of GM cotton proved to be a success in Australia ;– the yields were equivalent to the non-transgenic varieties and the crop used much less pesticide to produce (85% reduction). The subsequent introduction of a second variety of GM cotton led to increases in GM cotton production until 95% of the Australian cotton crop
11050-503: The genetics of white cotton have led many cotton-growing locations to ban the growing of colored cotton varieties. The word "cotton" has Arabic origins , derived from the Arabic word قطن ( qutn or qutun ). This was the usual word for cotton in medieval Arabic . Marco Polo in chapter 2 in his book, describes a province he calls Khotan in Turkestan, today's Xinjiang , where cotton
11180-559: The heart of the global cotton trade. Production capacity in Britain and the United States was improved by the invention of the modern cotton gin by the American Eli Whitney in 1793. Before the development of cotton gins, the cotton fibers had to be pulled from the seeds tediously by hand. By the late 1700s, a number of crude ginning machines had been developed. However, to produce a bale of cotton required over 600 hours of human labor, making large-scale production uneconomical in
11310-465: The insubstantiality of its covering. Marin and Cézanne were important to Frankenthaler not only for their watercolors or for the lightness of their work, but, more importantly, because both of them had liberated their oil paintings by treating them like watercolors, which was what Frankenthaler began to do... In Cézanne’s case this transposition of techniques also encouraged him to leave uncovered areas of white canvas between patches of thinned-down oil. This
11440-691: The knowledge of its spinning and weaving in Meroë reached a high level. The export of textiles was one of the sources of wealth for Meroë. Ancient Nubia had a "culture of cotton" of sorts, evidenced by physical evidence of cotton processing tools and the presence of cattle in certain areas. Some researchers propose that cotton was important to the Nubian economy for its use in contact with the neighboring Egyptians. Aksumite King Ezana boasted in his inscription that he destroyed large cotton plantations in Meroë during his conquest of
11570-423: The largest exporter for many years. There are four commercially grown species of cotton, all domesticated in antiquity: Hybrid varieties are also cultivated. The two New World cotton species account for the vast majority of modern cotton production, but the two Old World species were widely used before the 1900s. While cotton fibers occur naturally in colors of white, brown, pink and green, fears of contaminating
11700-474: The main pests in commercial cotton are lepidopteran larvae, which are killed by the Bt protein in the transgenic cotton they eat. This eliminates the need to use large amounts of broad-spectrum insecticides to kill lepidopteran pests (some of which have developed pyrethroid resistance). This spares natural insect predators in the farm ecology and further contributes to noninsecticide pest management. However, Bt cotton
11830-474: The major products of Persia, including cotton. John Chardin , a French traveler of the 17th century who visited Safavid Persia , spoke approvingly of the vast cotton farms of Persia. Cotton ( Gossypium herbaceum Linnaeus) may have been domesticated 5000 BC in eastern Sudan near the Middle Nile Basin region, where cotton cloth was being produced. Around the 4th century BC, the cultivation of cotton and
11960-405: The name for cotton in several Germanic languages, such as German Baumwolle , which translates as "tree wool" ( Baum means "tree"; Wolle means "wool"). Noting its similarities to wool, people in the region could only imagine that cotton must be produced by plant-borne sheep. John Mandeville , writing in 1350, stated as fact that "There grew there [India] a wonderful tree which bore tiny lambs on
12090-469: The new textile industries of the Northeastern United States and northwestern Europe. In 1860 the slogan " Cotton is king " characterized the attitude of Southern leaders toward this monocrop in that Europe would support an independent Confederate States of America in 1861 in order to protect the supply of cotton it needed for its very large textile industry. Russell Griffin of California was
12220-461: The pavise, covered with multiple layers of gesso and often richly painted in tempera technique. Finally, the surface was sealed with a transparent varnish. While the gessoed canvas was a perfect painting surface, the primary purpose of the canvas application may have been the strengthening of the wooden shield corpus in a manner similar to modern glass-reinforced plastic . Splined canvases differ from traditional side-stapled canvas in that canvas
12350-785: The people of ancient India, Egypt, and China. Hundreds of years before the Christian era, cotton textiles were woven in India with matchless skill, and their use spread to the Mediterranean countries. In Iran ( Persia ), the history of cotton dates back to the Achaemenid era (5th century BC); however, there are few sources about the planting of cotton in pre-Islamic Iran. Cotton cultivation was common in Merv , Ray and Pars . In Persian poems, especially Ferdowsi 's Shahname , there are references to cotton ("panbe" in Persian ). Marco Polo (13th century) refers to
12480-410: The raw fiber was sent to England for processing. The Indian Mahatma Gandhi described the process: In the United States, growing Southern cotton generated significant wealth and capital for the antebellum South, as well as raw material for Northern textile industries. Before 1865 the cotton was largely produced through the labor of enslaved African Americans. It enriched both the Southern landowners and
12610-604: The region. In the Meroitic Period (beginning 3rd century BCE), many cotton textiles have been recovered, preserved due to favorable arid conditions. Most of these fabric fragments come from Lower Nubia, and the cotton textiles account for 85% of the archaeological textiles from Classic/Late Meroitic sites. Due to these arid conditions, cotton, a plant that usually thrives moderate rainfall and richer soils, requires extra irrigation and labor in Sudanese climate conditions. Therefore,
12740-651: The rest of Europe. The spinning wheel , introduced to Europe circa 1350, improved the speed of cotton spinning. By the 15th century, Venice , Antwerp , and Haarlem were important ports for cotton trade, and the sale and transportation of cotton fabrics had become very profitable. Under the Mughal Empire , which ruled in the Indian subcontinent from the early 16th century to the early 18th century, Indian cotton production increased, in terms of both raw cotton and cotton textiles. The Mughals introduced agrarian reforms such as
12870-742: The role of religious and art historical iconography in the subordination of women, became "one of the most iconic images of the feminist art movement ." In 1953, Kenneth Noland and Morris Louis saw her Mountains and Sea which, Louis said later, was a "bridge between Pollock and what was possible." On the other hand, some critics called her work "merely beautiful." Grace Glueck's obituary in The New York Times summed up Frankenthaler's career: Critics have not unanimously praised Ms. Frankenthaler's art. Some have seen it as thin in substance, uncontrolled in method, too sweet in color and too "poetic." But it has been far more apt to garner admirers like
13000-456: The traditional manner. One of the most outstanding differences between modern painting techniques and those of the Flemish and Dutch Masters is in the preparation of the canvas. "Modern" techniques take advantage of both the canvas texture as well as those of the paint itself. Renaissance masters took extreme measures to ensure that none of the texture of the canvas came through. This required
13130-498: The use of oil paint. In 1970, artist Helen Frankenthaler commented about her use of staining: When I first started doing the stain paintings, I left large areas of canvas unpainted, I think, because the canvas itself acted as forcefully and as positively as paint or line or color. In other words, the very ground was part of the medium, so that instead of thinking of it as background or negative space or an empty spot, that area did not need paint because it had paint next to it. The thing
13260-471: The use of pesticides at similar levels to non-Bt cotton and causing less profit for farmers because of the extra expense of GM seeds. However, a 2009 study by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Stanford University and Rutgers University refuted this. They concluded that the GM cotton effectively controlled bollworm. The secondary pests were mostly miridae (plant bugs) whose increase was related to local temperature and rainfall and only continued to increase in half
13390-442: The villages and then taken to towns in the form of yarn to be woven into cloth textiles, was advanced by the diffusion of the spinning wheel across India shortly before the Mughal era, lowering the costs of yarn and helping to increase demand for cotton. The diffusion of the spinning wheel, and the incorporation of the worm gear and crank handle into the roller cotton gin, led to greatly expanded Indian cotton textile production during
13520-500: The villages studied. Moreover, the increase in insecticide use for the control of these secondary insects was far smaller than the reduction in total insecticide use due to Bt cotton adoption. A 2012 Chinese study concluded that Bt cotton halved the use of pesticides and doubled the level of ladybirds, lacewings and spiders. The International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA) said that, worldwide, GM cotton
13650-853: The visual arts. In 2021 the foundation created Frankenthaler Climate Initiative . In July 2021, the foundation award the first round of grants totaling $ 5.1 million. The recipients included the Museo de Arte de Ponce , the Santa Rosa Indian Museum and Cultural Center, the Studio Museum in Harlem , and the Yale University Arts Center. In a 2023 lawsuit filed at the New York Supreme Court , Frankenthaler’s nephew Frederick Iseman claimed that Clifford Ross and other family members on
13780-535: The war. The Lancashire Cotton Famine prompted the main purchasers of cotton, Britain and France , to turn to Egyptian cotton. British and French traders invested heavily in cotton plantations. The Egyptian government of Viceroy Isma'il took out substantial loans from European bankers and stock exchanges. After the American Civil War ended in 1865, British and French traders abandoned Egyptian cotton and returned to cheap American exports, sending Egypt into
13910-460: The wood itself, making maquettes. The Tales of Genji took nearly three years to complete. Frankenthaler then went on to create Madame Butterfly , a print that employed one hundred and two different colors and forty-six woodblocks. Frankenthaler received the National Medal of Arts in 2001. She served on the National Council on the Arts of the National Endowment for the Arts from 1985 to 1992. Her other awards include First Prize for Painting at
14040-571: The world, economies that rely on it face difficulties and conflict, as well as potential environmental problems. For example, improper cropping and irrigation practices have led to desertification in areas of Uzbekistan , where cotton is a major export. In the days of the Soviet Union , the Aral Sea was tapped for agricultural irrigation, largely of cotton, and now salination is widespread. Cotton can also be cultivated to have colors other than
14170-517: The world. A long-term study on the economic impacts of Bt cotton in India, published in the Journal PNAS in 2012, showed that Bt cotton has increased yields, profits, and living standards of smallholder farmers. The U.S. GM cotton crop was 4.0 million hectares in 2011 the second largest area in the world, the Chinese GM cotton crop was third largest by area with 3.9 million hectares and Pakistan had
14300-523: The yellowish off-white typical of modern commercial cotton fibers. Naturally colored cotton can come in red, green, and several shades of brown. The water footprint of cotton fibers is substantially larger than for most other plant fibers. Cotton is also known as a thirsty crop; on average, globally, cotton requires 8,000–10,000 liters of water for one kilogram of cotton, and in dry areas, it may require even more such as in some areas of India, it may need 22,500 liters. Genetically modified (GM) cotton
14430-426: Was GM in 2009 making Australia the country with the fifth largest GM cotton crop in the world. Other GM cotton growing countries in 2011 were Argentina, Myanmar, Burkina Faso, Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, South Africa and Costa Rica. Cotton has been genetically modified for resistance to glyphosate a broad-spectrum herbicide discovered by Monsanto which also sells some of the Bt cotton seeds to farmers. There are also
14560-547: Was a source of income for families across the South. Rural and small town school systems had split vacations so children could work in the fields during "cotton-picking." During the middle 20th century, employment in cotton farming fell, as machines began to replace laborers and the South's rural labor force dwindled during the World Wars. Cotton remains a major export of the United States, with large farms in California, Arizona and
14690-586: Was all there. I wanted to live in this land. I had to live there, and master the language. Some of her thoughts on painting: A really good picture looks as if it's happened at once. It's an immediate image. For my own work, when a picture looks labored and overworked, and you can read in it—well, she did this and then she did that, and then she did that—there is something in it that has not got to do with beautiful art to me. And I usually throw these out, though I think very often it takes ten of those over-labored efforts to produce one really beautiful wrist motion that
14820-409: Was also said to be the ultimate fusing of image and canvas, drawing attention to the flatness of the painting itself. The major disadvantage of this method, however, is that the oil in the paints will eventually cause the canvas to discolor and rot away. The technique was adopted by other artists, notably Morris Louis (1912–1962) and Kenneth Noland (1924–2010), and launched the second generation of
14950-432: Was an American abstract expressionist painter. She was a major contributor to the history of postwar American painting. Having exhibited her work for over six decades (early 1950s until 2011), she spanned several generations of abstract painters while continuing to produce vital and ever-changing new work. Frankenthaler began exhibiting her large-scale abstract expressionist paintings in contemporary museums and galleries in
15080-459: Was developed to reduce the heavy reliance on pesticides. The bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) naturally produces a chemical harmful only to a small fraction of insects, most notably the larvae of moths and butterflies , beetles , and flies , and harmless to other forms of life. The gene coding for Bt toxin has been inserted into cotton, causing cotton, called Bt cotton , to produce this natural insecticide in its tissues. In many regions,
15210-462: Was especially interesting to Frankenthaler too. In Mountains and Sea , her first professionally exhibited work, Frankenthaler made use of the soak stain technique. The work itself was painted after a trip to Nova Scotia, which partly questions the extent of its non-representational status. Although Mountains and Sea is not a direct depiction of the Nova Scotia coastline, elements of the work suggest
15340-401: Was grown by Chinese peoples in the southern Chinese province of Yunnan . Egyptians grew and spun cotton in the first seven centuries of the Christian era. Handheld roller cotton gins had been used in India since the 6th century, and was then introduced to other countries from there. Between the 12th and 14th centuries, dual-roller gins appeared in India and China. The Indian version of
15470-689: Was grown in abundance. The word entered the Romance languages in the mid-12th century, and English a century later. Cotton fabric was known to the ancient Romans as an import, but cotton was rare in the Romance-speaking lands until imports from the Arabic-speaking lands in the later medieval era at transformatively lowered prices. The earliest evidence of the use of cotton in the Old World , dated to 5500 BC and preserved in copper beads, has been found at
15600-418: Was imported from India without tariffs to British factories which manufactured textiles from Indian cotton, giving Britain a monopoly over India's large market and cotton resources. India served as both a significant supplier of raw goods to British manufacturers and a large captive market for British manufactured goods. Britain eventually surpassed India as the world's leading cotton textile manufacturer in
15730-544: Was in distemper or glue, often used for banners to be carried in procession. This is a less durable medium, and surviving examples such as Dirk Bouts ' Entombment , in distemper on linen (1450s, National Gallery ) are rare, and often rather faded in appearance. Panel painting remained more common until the 16th century in Italy and the 17th century in Northern Europe. Mantegna and Venetian artists were among those leading
15860-496: Was inspired by two sources: the first was an exhibition of fifteenth century woodcuts that Frankenthaler saw on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art , the second being a mulberry tree that grew outside of Tyler's studio. In 1995, the pair collaborated again, creating The Tales of Genji , a series of six woodcut prints. To create woodcuts with a resonance similar to Frankenthaler's painterly style, she painted her plans onto
15990-451: Was invented in India during the early Delhi Sultanate era of the 13th–14th centuries, came into use in the Mughal Empire some time around the 16th century, and is still used in India through to the present day. Another innovation, the incorporation of the crank handle in the cotton gin, first appeared in India some time during the late Delhi Sultanate or the early Mughal Empire. The production of cotton, which may have largely been spun in
16120-443: Was no punishment for continuing to sell cotton cloth, smuggling of the popular material became commonplace. In 1721, dissatisfied with the results of the first act, Parliament passed a stricter addition, this time prohibiting the sale of most cottons, imported and domestic (exempting only thread Fustian and raw cotton). The exemption of raw cotton from the prohibition initially saw 2 thousand bales of cotton imported annually, to become
16250-422: Was planted on an area of 25 million hectares in 2011. This was 69% of the worldwide total area planted in cotton. GM cotton acreage in India grew at a rapid rate, increasing from 50,000 hectares in 2002 to 10.6 million hectares in 2011. The total cotton area in India was 12.1 million hectares in 2011, so GM cotton was grown on 88% of the cotton area. This made India the country with the largest area of GM cotton in
16380-400: Was put on Parliament, by the new mill owners, to remove the prohibition on the production and sale of pure cotton cloth, as they could easily compete with anything the EIC could import. The acts were repealed in 1774, triggering a wave of investment in mill-based cotton spinning and production, doubling the demand for raw cotton within a couple of years, and doubling it again every decade, into
16510-592: Was responsible for a large part of the empire's international trade. India had a 25% share of the global textile trade in the early 18th century. Indian cotton textiles were the most important manufactured goods in world trade in the 18th century, consumed across the world from the Americas to Japan . The most important center of cotton production was the Bengal Subah province, particularly around its capital city of Dhaka . The worm gear roller cotton gin , which
16640-407: Was the invention of the cotton gin that lowered the cost of production that led to its widespread use, and it is the most widely used natural fiber cloth in clothing today. Current estimates for world production are about 25 million tonnes or 110 million bales annually, accounting for 2.5% of the world's arable land . India is the world's largest producer of cotton. The United States has been
16770-456: Was time-consuming and expensive. This, coupled with the emergence of American cotton as a superior type (due to the longer, stronger fibers of the two domesticated native American species, Gossypium hirsutum and Gossypium barbadense ), encouraged British traders to purchase cotton from plantations in the United States and in the Caribbean . By the mid-19th century, " King Cotton " had become
16900-612: Was to decide where to leave it and where to fill it and where to say this doesn't need another line or another pail of colors. It's saying it in space. Early canvas was made of linen , a sturdy brownish fabric of considerable strength. Linen is particularly suitable for the use of oil paint. In the early 20th century, cotton canvas, often referred to as " cotton duck ", came into use. Linen is composed of higher quality material, and remains popular with many professional artists, especially those who work with oil paint. Cotton duck, which stretches more fully and has an even, mechanical weave, offers
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