By Helen Frankenthaler - 'A Green thought in a Green Shade'

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Helen Frankenthaler: A Green Thought in a Green Shade, 1981 119 × 156 1/2 in. (302.3 × 397.5 cm). Acrylic on canvas

© 2026 Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Inc. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Image used with kind permission of The Helen Frankenthaler Foundation - and with thanks.

My source: Phoebe Evans. Opening Shot, FT.com/HTSI FTWeekend. 23rd April, 2026, p.13.

 
Gagosian. Helen Frankenthaler: The Moment and the Distance
April 30–July 2, 2026 West 21st Street, New York 

 

'Realization' in Training and Simulation

'Some time in the late 1800s, the body of a young woman was pulled from the River Seine. Lacking any signs of struggle or foul play, her death was ruled a suicide. She was displayed on a slab of marble in the window of the Paris morgue - standard procedure for corpses awaiting identification. At the time, the morgue was a popular, albeit gruesome, attraction which drew more daily visitors than the Louvre. ... Apparently, the forensic scientist assigned to the drowned girl's cadaver became so captivated by her that he paid a moulder to make a plaster cast of her face.' p.16.

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'The face is important. The face: pleasant, delicate features, all languid curves, a relaxed, even blissful expression. Her long, matted eyelashes stuck, as if still wet, to plump cheeks. Her mouth curved into an enigmatic smile. The face, gone unclaimed, triggered an intense, cultish frenzy across Europe. She was dubbed the L'Inconnue de la Seine (the Unknown Woman of the Seine). ... The advent of mechanical reproduction allowed the mask to be copied and sold on a massive scale. ... Widely replicated in plaster, wax and then plastic, L'Inconnue's dead face was used as a model for artists at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, and apprentices at beautician training schools.' p.16.

'You may have seen her face yourself. In fact, odds are you've kissed it - indeed, 300 million people have. In 1955, tasked with the job of creating a life-size doll for teaching mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, Norwegian toymaker Åsmund Lærdal thought back to a death mask he'd noticed years ago, hung in his wife's family home. Lærdal wanted the face to be inviting, not dead-looking. It had to be female, of course, the kind of face men undergoing CPR training would be inclined to kiss. L`Inconnue was, perhaps, the obvious choice for Resuscì Anne, the doll that is still used in schools and swimming pools across the UK and US. Lærdal's website nods to the mask's origins, writing that "the face of death became the face of life".' p.16.

Ack. Sarah Haque, https://www.sarahhaque.co.uk/ 

The strange allure of L'Inconnue de la Seine, FT Magazine, 1,149, November 1, 2025. p.16-17. https://www.ft.com/content/64c930ac-b2b7-4314-b915-eb93c87a451f

See also: Wikipedia - L'Inconnue de la Seine

Last Word by Ann Williams

LAST WORD

In Africa, one word for now,

Another word for tomorrow,

But forty words for the past.

The elephants do not forget.

They stand close in a circle,

Turn the heaped pile of bones

This way and that, stroke

Leg-bone, thigh and skull,

Rub dust into their faces.

Sighing, they understand

The weight of grief,

How memory is carried.

by Ann Williams

Poetry, edited by Peter Abbs (RIP 2020), Small Epiphanies, Resurgence & Ecologist, Sept/Oct 2013, Issue 280: p.52-53. I cannot locate a web presence for Ann Williams, if anyone can assist please get in touch. Resurgence & Ecologist is a marvellous read. I do not subscribe but enjoy a copy when visiting a city.

P.S. I feel bad not subscribing, but you have to 'cut your cloth'. That's not the only pain factor. An online subscription may be greener, and cheaper? As with book reviews (Ethics and AI - to follow), I need a physical copy, spending enough time on-screen already. The publication is much more than a magazine. The magazine represents a change of mindset and ironically reflects former and for many 'new' ways of life.

Yves Klein 'Anthropométrie sans titre'

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	Anthropométrie sans titre (ANT 43), c1960 © Courtesy of Lévy Gorvy Dayan

My source: Rotraut to Baya Simons. My husband, Yves Klein, FT Weekend, HTSI, 11 May 2024. pp.23-24.

Yves Klein and the Tangible World is at Lévy Gorvy Dayan until 25 May, levygorvydayan.com

A Hospital Room with a View

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Lucy
Barton

Photo: Waterstones Tottenham Court Road Window Display 4/3/2017

Book cover: Waterstones

Book: The Last Asylum

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The Last Asylum	-sociology -medicine
medical- social-

group - population

Winwick Hospital remembered

Image source: Wordery