Paintings by Helen Frankenthaler

The original painting, created by Helen Frankenthaler:        

And what I wanted to highlight:  

Now, the first thing that I want to note is that the minimalist style of this painting makes the work much more open to personal interpretation, which is the reason why I chose this painting.  But the reason that I chose this reframing is because I feel that this gold paint mark is arguably the centerpiece that makes the painting.  In this case, the mark, as displayed on the bottom, does little to nothing on its own, but when combined with the rest of the painting, it gives us a visual image, which to me looks like a human face.  

One thing that I would note about the "nose" is that it utilizes both actual and virtual line types.  In this case, the left hand side also provides us with an example of an actual line, as it gives a clear, visible line between the nose and the pink space.  This is also a good case for visual affinity due to the use of warm colors, similar line structures, and simple space, which lets everything blend together due in their similarities. 

With this in mind, let's take a look at the at the rhythm of the image.  The image actually does contain some rhythm, as you'll notice the pink space, the nose, and the rest of the face are evenly spaced out between each other.  What this rhythm allows us to look at is the subjective details behind the image, such as whether or not the image is actually a face and how we perceive everything on the image.  In this case, I feel that Frankenthaler intentionally framed the painting like this so that the subjective details could be highlighted.    

Finally, we will look at the Rule of Thirds that is present in this painting.  In this case, the centerpiece, the "nose", dominates the middle of the frame, and naturally, our eyes are drawn to that center point.  A quick sweep of the painting shows that when we pass through all of the central points, then we find that the "nose" is centered in the middle of these points, which attracts our attention.  In this way, the painting is using the rule of thirds to show us it's main, subjective detail, so that we can look to the rest of the painting in order to find out what it is that we're looking at.