Essays

Essays

Date: March 17, 2015
Author: kwagner2@uoregon.edu
Category:

Biography

            Frank Stella was born in Malden, Massachusetts, a blue-color suburb right outside of Boston, on May 12th, 1936. From Italian decent, his parents pushed him to do his best and enrolled him in an elite secondary school, Phillips Academy, to finish out his education before he enrolled in Princeton University in 1954. While at Princeton, he played lacrosse and had to join in night painting and drawing classes, since they did not offer a studio art degree. He began to paint in the Abstract Expressionist style for hours at a time; the artists of that era are what inspired him to even begin making art. He got his Bachelor of Arts degree in history by1958, but was encouraged to pursue the arts from other artists and professors he met at the university. While he was there, he met many influential people including Michael Fried, who became widely known for his critiques on modern art. As soon as he graduated, Stella moved to the Lower East Side of New York City to rent a room for the summer to paint. Eventually Stella began to band with other artists in the city, and got a loft studio to share with sculptor Carl Andre and photographer Hollis Frampton. After seeing a Jasper Johns’s one man show, Stella was inspired by the idea that his work was not trying to be anything, it was just colors and lines. And so began Stella’s work on “The Black Paintings”, and his big break was just around the corner.

Relation to Contemporary Art

Frank Stella’s “Black Paintings” were the stepping-stone into the Minimalist movement in the late 1950s and early 1960s. When Stella began training during his time at Princeton, Abstract Expressionism was widely popular. Stella greatly admired it, however as he began his early works in New York City, he felt bound to break the mold of the emotional and expressive use of paint and aimed for flatness and objectiveness. He began creating works with no gestural strokes and he forced illusionistic space out of his work. This was a very different approach to art, because the common belief for the time was that a “painting is a window into three-dimensional space.” Stella’s work began to question the very idea of what a painting could be, and his ideas that “what you see is what you see” sparked a fire in the Minimalist movement, inspiring artists like Donald Judd and Sol LeWitt to create works that didn’t hide the meaning inside the sculpture or painting, but rather the meaning of the work was right in front of the viewer. Stella’s concept that he as an artist made no aesthetic decision towards the outcome of his paintings was a huge theme that ran through minimalism and other art movements such as color field painting.

Influences

            While Stella was in secondary school, his professors took him to art exhibitions in New York City. Stella was particularly fascinated with the work of Jackson Pollock, Franz Klein and Jasper Johns. Although Stella steered away from the appearance of an artist’s hand in his work as well as taking away any metaphorical associations, Stella saw in Pollock something he could emulate in his own pieces. Pollock was able to take away the concept of preparation for his paintings, and he made his gestures direct and immediate, so that his works were surface level and literal, rejecting the idea of being analyzed for anything more than what they were. Jasper Johns’s flag and target paintings heavily influenced Stella, he was inspired by the idea that his work was not trying to be anything, it was jut flags and targets made up by colors, shapes and lines. This notion of pure form had a big influence on his work in the future. Stella’s persistence in the notion of removing the artist’s hand and aesthetic decisions heavily influenced artists like Sol LeWitt, who wrote directions for his art and had other people do the execution to create his work. Stella also consistently used non-art materials to create works of art, such as enamel, honeycomb aluminum, fiberglass and more. This inspired many other artists to look outside of the typical materials they use to create art, such as Dan Flavin using florescent light bulbs.

Favorite Work of Mine

            My favorite work of Frank Stella’s comes in a series (no surprise there), and it happens to be the Irregular Polygon Series. Stella has so many great works to choose from, and I am attracted to a lot of his later works in sculpture, especially the ones with lots of color and odd geometric shapes. However, I really resonate with the Irregular Polygon Series because the idea and process behind these works reminds me a lot of the way I make my own artwork. So I have a great appreciation for this series. What drew me to this series is Stella’s approach to the geometric shapes. He took many simple shapes, and placed them together in a strategic way. In his own words, “The basic idea of the geometry can be described in a relatively simple way: you can say ‘That’s a triangle stuck into a square.’ But it gets complicated when you look at it, there’s a lot of ways a triangle can fit into a square, and a lot depends on what you do with it. The idea can be fairly simple but the results can be quite different.” I find this concept so fascinating and important. When it comes to this series, Stella had so much to think about. Stability, color compatibility, symmetry and tension all play a vital role in each of the compositions Stella has created. So much is going on underneath such a relatively simple surface, and many viewers don’t realize that Stella placed the square in a specific position so that the viewer would feel a sense of equilibrium, or that he picked that color combination to create an illusion of depth or to create flatness. I admire Stella’s approach to this series, and how so many decisions had to be made to create such perfect simplicity. See above featured image for examples from the series.

Bibliography

 

Lane, Tahree. “The Art of Geometry: ‘Irregular Polygons’ by Frank Stella Go on Display Friday.” Toledo Blade. April 3, 2011. Accessed January 27, 2015. http://www.toledoblade.com/Art/2011/04/03/The-Art-of-Geometry-Irregular-Polygons-by-Frank-Stella.html.

This is a great site with an in-depth analysis on the Irregular Polygon series. It goes into color, symmetry, tension and equilibrium all created in his work.

 

Moss, Jenna. “The Color of Industry: Frank Stella, Donald Judd and Andy Warhol.” CUREJ College Undergraduate Research 1 (2007). Accessed March 14, 2015. http://repository.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1062&context=curej.

An online academic journal examining the era of contemporary art, specifically the influences that Warhol, Stella and Judd had on it. Their materials used and the transition from abstract expressionism to pop art and minimalism are heavily discussed.

 

Smith, Roberta. “Laying the Tracks Others Followed.” The New York Times. April 26, 2012. Accessed March 14, 2015. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/27/arts/design/frank-stellas-early-work-at-lm-arts.html?_r=0.

This is a New York Times article highlighting the Copper and Aluminum Series in promotion for an L&M art show. It gives lots of details on the transition from The Black Series to this series, and gives historical significance to the two.

 

Chanin, Clifford. “The Art of Afterwards.” The Legacy Project. Accessed March 14, 2015. http://www.legacy-project.org/index.php?page=exhib_intro&exhibID=6.

A great explanation to the origin of the Polish Village Series, including Stella’s inspirations and influences for the project and lots of historical information that are relevant to the series itself.

 

Cooper, Harry, and David Breslin. Make It New: Abstract Painting from the National Gallery of Art 1950-1975. Clark Art Institute and the National Gallery of Art, Washington and the Yale University Press. 24-26.

I found this book in the AAA Library, and it analyzed many artists during the Contemporary Art era. The pages I read were specifically about Frank Stella, and how Jackson Pollock had a heavy influence on his work, whether he meant for him to or not.

 

Stella, Frank. Working Space. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1986.

I also found this book in the AAA Library, written by Frank Stella himself, he compares the representational paintings during the 16th century to the abstract paintings of the 20th century. Stella turns from artists to art critic, and it gives a great insight to the way he thinks and approaches art, and how renaissance art influenced him.

 

“Frank Stella Biography, Art, and Analysis of Works.” The Art Story. Accessed January 27, 2015. http://www.theartstory.org/artist-stella-frank.htm.

A great synopsis for Frank Stella’s achievements, and this page goes into his influences on minimalism, what artists influenced him and vice versa. It also gives brief analyses of his most famous works.

 

Linsely, Robert. “Frank Stella | Abstract Critical.” Abstract Critical. November 29, 2012. Accessed March 17, 2015. http://abstractcritical.com/article/frank-stella/.

A great and lengthy article that goes in depth on specific bodies of work by Stella, and the influences that modernism had on him. Written by someone who clearly knows a lot of art history and has a passion for Stella’s work.

 

Belcove, Julie. “Artist Frank Stella Continues to Provoke.” WSJ. November 4, 2014. Accessed March 17, 2015. http://www.wsj.com/articles/artist-frank-stella-continues-to-provoke-1415116961

A super interesting article, written rather recently, about Stella’s new pursuits in art, and how he is gearing up for a new show at the Whitney Museum in New York. This article goes back to his roots, diving into his history and how he started, and gives some valuable information about his influences.

 

Halley, Peter. “Frank Stella… and the Simulacrum.” Frank Stella… and the Simulacrum. January 1, 1986. Accessed March 17, 2015. http://www.peterhalley.com/ARTISTS/PETER.HALLEY/Stella and Simulacrum.FR2.htm.

An article that was originally published in 1986 in a magazine, it examines Stella’s role in the post-modern art era. The author places Stella in context to what was going on historically at the time of his different series, and examines their impact on the modern art world.