Parsing the picture frame

Magazine Antiques, Feb, 2003 by Alfred Mayor

The author of this cerebral consideration of picture frames, W H. Bailey, appropriately teaches display design at the Parsons School of Design in New York City. His seven chapter headings accurately foretell his approach: the frame as altarpiece, as window, as decoration, as content; frames found, designed, or made by artists.

Introducing the "Frame as Window," Bailey writes: "The frame allows us to step from one world into the other and helps us maintain our focus as we relax and enter the world of the painting. Once we are safely within that realm, the frame's role shifts to one of a security agent ensuring that we can spend all the time we want actively engaged with the work of art." This seems a very serviceable definition of most frames. However, the deeper you delve, the more complex things become. Consider, for example, the frame to Florine Stettheimer's Portrait of Duchamp (1923; Philadelphia Museum of Art) which is made up entirely of the alternating letters "MD" in bold relief. The author concludes: "By virtue of its assembly-line, staccato movement, the frame adds a mechanistic dynamism to the outer edge of the portrait and reiterates the expanding circle of the interior clock. To trap this activated, free-fall universe Stettheimer has made a frame fit for a king."

If this analysis is too rich for your blood, there is much that is more immediately accessible in this consideration of some sixty pictures, from an eleventh-century Byzantine gospel cover (Tesoro, San Marco, Venice) to Lynne Golob Gelfman's Bloodlet (private collection) of 1997. The wide, intricately carved frame to Michelangelo Buonarroti's Doni Madonna (c. 1505-1507; Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence) designed by the artist, contains the three-dimensional heads of five prophets, each popping out of a medallion. The author suggests that the downward looking prophet at the top asks us to follow his gaze as he considers the Holy Family that is the subject of the painting. The gap between the two prophets near the bottom invites "us to enter the picture at ground level before our gaze is drawn upward in a sweeping S-curve that culminates in the loving looks being exchanged by mother and child." Moreover, because the protruding heads are naturalistic in color, unlike the gold of the frame, "they reassure us that we may enter and become part of this intimate humanistic and allegorical scene."

In the case of the self-portrait of Ferdinand Bol (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam) of 1669, the frame becomes the gloss to the meaning of this wedding present to his second wife. It is a vigorously three-dimensional tribute to the Dutch passion for flowers. But in this case the flowers are carefully chosen: sunflowers for adoration, roses for love, grapes for charity, ranunculi for radiance, campanula for gratitude, and corn for fertility. Among the "Frames Found by Artists" is Lany Rivers's Jim Dine Storm Window Portrait of 1965, which is actually three portraits revealed as you raise and lower halves of the aluminum storm window frame. The author comments: "The storm window transformed into picture window is a wry bit of visual punning, as well as fitting homage to hardware stores, mechanical ingenuity, and the improvisational work of two very American artists. The aluminum storm window parodies the ubiquitous welded aluminum frame used by galleries, museums, and collectors during the 1960s."

"Frames Designed by Artists" include Henri Matisse's The Red Studio (Museum of Modern Art, New York City) of 1911, which has no frame at all. This is a generous inclusion by an author writing about frames, especially as he quotes Matisse saying: "The four sides of a frame are among the most important parts of a picture. A painting or a drawing included in a given space ought, therefore, to be in perfect harmony with the frame." The painting is a carefully chosen, artfully arranged selection of paintings and other objects from Matisse's studio. Any frame around this picture would pin the studio to the wall, eliminating its ability to expand into a room as the viewer browses through its contents. In this case, the author concludes, "the lack of a frame is an important part of the picture."

Defining Edges: A New Look at Picture Frames, by W H. Bailey (Harry N. Abrams, 800-288-2129) $39.95 (hardcovers).