I went to America in 1959 on a travel scholarship and when I was in New York I visited a critic called Doré Ashton. Who should be there but Helen and her husband, the painter Bob Motherwell? They offered me a lift to my hotel, so we went uptown together and, on the way, they said: 'You must be lonesome here, you don't know anybody. We'll give a party for you.' That's how friendly they were. They gave a wonderful party. I was sitting next to the film star Hedy Lamarr, which was a surprise. The sculptor David Smith was there and the painter Franz Kline. It was amazing to come in as a young man not knowing anybody and find that tremendously welcoming attitude.
We didn't talk about our work then, but in 1963 I went back for two years with my wife, the painter Sheila Girling, and my two sons, to teach at Bennington College in Vermont, where Helen had been a student. At the weekends a lot of practising artists were around. I got to know her better then, but it wasn't until she divorced Bob in 1971 that I really got to know her as a person and to talk about art. She had been very close to Clement Greenberg years before and we all used to meet often at Kenneth Noland's farm.
Jules Olitski - another painter - Noland, Helen and I were all going in the same direction really. Coming from Britain and meeting those artists in New York was a knockout. They weren't hamstrung by history, which I think we were in England. In America they were saying, 'We've got to push the boundaries.' They were very open to experiment, especially with new materials, and they worked on a grand scale, buying canvas by the roll, which I had never seen before. We went to each other's studios and discussed and criticised each other's work. It was completely different from what I had known. In England, one had little contact with other artists' studios, except of course at the sculpture department at St Martin's School of Art, where I was teaching.
Olitski, Noland, Helen and I shared a whole aesthetic. Trying to be direct, not let a lot of technical stuff get in the way. I think that's why I turned to steel. Because it isn't cast, you don't have to make a great big armature before you start. Paintings like Helen's Mountains and Sea are very direct. They are painted on the unprimed canvas, using the acrylic very thinly: bang - there it is. It's a big painting but it's painted like a watercolour. That sort of directness is something that I share with her - trying to get your feelings to come straight through without a lot of barriers. Noland used to talk about one-shot painting - it comes out of abstract expressionism and Pollock.
Helen's language is paint. It seems to come straight from her. She's a tremendous natural painter, and that's not an easy thing to pass on. People who want to really enjoy the quality of the paint and the paper, letting go a bit, they've been influenced by her. She's not an ideas painter, she's a painter's painter. That's very unfashionable at the moment and that's probably why she's not mentioned as much as she should be. Nevertheless, she is very well known in the US and her work does travel, but I think the English are rather frightened of things that are sensual and appeal to the gut. We like to be bit more cerebral, harder. We seem to have to have reasons for everything.
There's a direct lead-in to her hand. That's the big thing - she talks a lot about the wrist, the hand. She is able to put something down and that's it. It's an incredible thing to be so sure that you don't fiddle. And she gets it right - that's what's incredible.
I regularly visit America, and once I said to Helen that she should come and work in England some time, in my sculpture studio. Suddenly I got a letter saying, 'How about in three weeks' time?' That was in 1972. She worked in my studio here in Camden [north London]. She'd work full days for two or three weeks and was incredibly direct. Her eye is terrific. There's a confidence about her work. The sculptures she made have scarcely ever been seen publicly and are remarkable.
Helen then invited me to go and make paintings in her studio in New York. I said, 'No, I'm not a painter.' My wife is the painter and I've always said, 'You do the paintings and I'll do the sculpture.' But Helen said, 'No, you've got to come to the studio.' So I went to New York and stayed in the Wales Hotel, which was little more than a doss- house uptown. I walked into to her studio on the first day and she said, 'Here is your assistant, there are your paints and your rolls of canvas. It's all yours' - amazingly generous. I said, 'Helen, I thought you'd be working here, too.' She came in occasionally and, when she did, she was wonderful. She would focus on the weak or strong areas and, with her outside eye, could direct me to the heart of the paintings. I hated making pictures, actually. In the end I cut them up and made them into collages - like sculpture!
In the 80s, we started the Triangle Workshop in the US for British, American and Canadian artists and Helen used to come every year to do a criticism. People looked forward to her visits. You could really talk about art with her. She is neglected compared to her contemporaries. I don't know if it has anything to do with her being a woman. She never wanted to be thought of as 'a woman artist': she has always expected her art to be judged on equal terms.
She often sends a note saying: 'Missing you both, how are you, what are you doing?' When I was last in New York I had dinner with her and her husband, Stephen DuBrul. I owe her a phone call because she hasn't been well. Hopefully she'll be able to come over for the Bernard Jacobson show.
It's a difficult time for Helen because you tend to look at her work and say it's beautiful, and these days that's against the fashion. It's a pity. It would be a terrible shame if the art goes out of art - and she's a real artist.
An exhibition of recent works on paper by Helen Frankenthaler is at the Bernard Jacobson Gallery, 14a Clifford Street, London W1 (020 7495 8575) until 28 June From an interview with the artist by Julia Brown in After Mountains and Sea: Frankenthaler 1956-59 (Guggenheim Museum Publications)
