"IN 1958, Helen Frankenthaler made a painting that she titled Before the Caves. It was painted before she left on her honeymoon trip with Robert Motherwell, during which the couple planned to visit the paleolithic caves of Altamira and Lascaux. (Frankenthaler had taken an earlier trip to Altamira in 1953.) Upon her return, she would paint Hotel Cro-Magnon, whose title commemorates the hotel in Les Eyzies where she and Motherwell stayed."
"And the following year, in 1959, she made two other paintings that seemed to be steeped in the aftermath of the cave visits: Cave Memory-two paintings in one, because she made another with the same name on its backside-and First Creatures. These four/five works seemed to jibe with remarks she made about the cave paintings she saw during her two trips:"
"Painted in oil on unsized, unprimed canvas, Before the Caves has three horizontal creases running beneath the colored marks that become part of the ground of the composition, much in the same way that the three-dimensional undulations of rock become part of the cave paintings in Spain and France. With the painting's title in mind, we are then encouraged to see the linear gray-blue marks swooping through the composition as crevices in a non-flat surface that might be understood as a ceiling curving above the head,"
Before the Caves was painted in 1958 by Helen Frankenthaler immediately before a honeymoon trip with Robert Motherwell to the Paleolithic caves of Altamira and Lascaux. Earlier trips included Altamira in 1953. Subsequent works such as Hotel Cro-Magnon, Cave Memory, and First Creatures reflect that experience and connect to Frankenthaler's remarks about the cave paintings as allover murals. Before the Caves is oil on unsized, unprimed canvas and incorporates three horizontal creases that function as part of the pictorial ground. Linear gray-blue marks read as crevices, suggesting a non-flat, ceiling-like surface rather than a flat wall.
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