Jacob's Ladder

Helen Frankenthaler, 1957

A guy named Jacob falls asleep on the ground with a rock for a pillow. His brother wants him dead. Jacob had tricked their father into giving him the blessing meant for his brother. Alright, so we got some family trouble. Then he dreams a ladder going from the dirt all the way to heaven. Angels up and down it like a fire escape. He wakes up and says, more or less, God was here and I had no idea. That's the story behind the title of this painting. Jacob's Ladder. Although there's no sleeping guy in it. No little angels. So how did Helen Frankenthaler get there? New York painting in the fifties is a boys' club. Pollock has put his canvas on the floor and dripped paint across it. Helen likes the floor too. At twenty-three, she lays down a raw canvas, thins her oil paint, and pours. The paint sinks into the cloth. The next spring, a critic with a lot of pull brings two painters over to see what she's done. They go home and start pouring too. Five years after that first pour, she makes this one. Same move. The pouring move that made her name. Nine and a half feet tall. Rust red. Pale green. Lavender. Pink. Plenty of canvas left bare. Up top, a big pink burst, marks flung out like fingers. Down near the bottom, a patch of blue with short strokes laid across it. Rungs, once you see them. Years earlier, she had seen an old painting of Jacob's dream in Madrid. In that one, the ladder isn't made of wood. It's made of light. But she said the ladder in this painting showed up bit by bit while she worked. The shapes started to suggest an "exuberant figure and ladder. Therefore Jacob's Ladder." Her words. Including the "therefore."

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