Stella Timeline & Notes “There are two problems in painting. One is to find out what painting is and the other is to find out how to make a painting. The first is to learn something and the second is to make something.” –Stella, The Pratt Lecture (1960) “The aim of art is to create space – space that is not comprised by decoration or illustration, space in which the subjects of painting can live.” – Stella, The Norton Lectures (1983-84)
Born 1936, Malden, MA Attends high school at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts Attends college at Princeton University, where he majored in history and met Darby Bannard and Michael Fried. Early visits to New York art galleries fostered his artistic development o Abstract Expressionism huge o Influenced by Jackson Pollock and Franz Kline, among others Moves to New York 1958 Begins career as a pioneering Minimalist o Comes to painting after the success of Abstract Expressionism in the 1950s Learns from lessons of Ab Ex Pollock – “all-over” effect Newman – stripes (“zips”) o Interested in the concept of space within space o Initially learns to paint with a palette knife o 1958: sees Jasper Johns show at Leo Catelli Gallery Begins using stripes as a compositional unifier Also inspired by Motherwell’s Spanish Prison Window paintings (paints a square or rectangle in center of the canvas) – punches out a compartment of space from the center of the canvas o “Learning how to make paintings is just about learning how to paint, literally learning what painting and canvas do. Paint and canvas are not spiritual.” o Logic trumps emotion o Stella’s compositions over the course of his long career have vacillated between consolidation and fragmentation. Black Paintings (1958-60) o Again, Newman and Pollock are predecessors o Approached the canvas they way he would paint a house – a form of geometry to be mapped out and covered o Uses house painting brushes and enamel house paint o Draws attention to edges of the painting
“What painting wants more than anything else is working space…Painting does not want to be confined by boundaries of edge and surface.” -FS o A forceful, object-like quality o Gives each canvas “a good, thick coat.” Enamel is oil-based, so has a semi-glossy finish o Lines seem to hover just above the canvas o SPACE is created o Lines aren’t straight o Hand painted - illusion of a gentle vibration o “The aim of art is to create space – space that is not compromised by decoration or illustration, space in which the subject of painting can live.” o Emotional resonance (see Rothko, late paintings) o Their bluntness pushed abstract painting into a new era of materialism o Stella a bridge between Ab Ex and Minimalism Sets stage for minimalists Flavin’s first diagonal piece made in 1963 Judd’s first floor box piece made in 1964 Andre has first show in NY in 1965 Judd’s essay, “Specific Objects,” published in 1964 Aluminum Paintings (1960) o While working on Black Paintings, begins drawings for future works o Drawings of jogged lines - “Sort of like the design for an electric circuit” o Walter Darby Bannard suggests he shape his canvases to accommodate these jogged lines o Aims to visually activate the surface image o Uses thick, metallic paint Drags when applied to a surface Bits of metal suspended in oil Oil bleeds onto the canvas – painterly quality This, and notches in the canvas, connect the painting to the wall – architectural engagement! o 1964: Seen as a key innovator of the “shaped canvas” and included in The Shaped Canvas @ the Guggenheim, organized by Lawrence Alloway o 1965: With then-wife Barbara Rose and curator Henry Gehdzahler organized Shape and Structure Included painters and sculptors (Andre, Bell, Bannard, Judd, Morris, Larry Zox, etc.) Stella embraces simple geometry Built compositions from systems of shapes o 1966: Included in Alloway’s Systemic Painting at Guggenheim Shape as unit in a systemic process of building material Incrementally filling in or enclosing space
o Stella has a hybrid identity – Minimalist/Abstract Painter Chamberlain referred to Stella as a “sculptor’s painter” Stella calls his paintings “facts of life.” His paintings part of a lineage of “found color” Duchamp’s Tu m’ (1918) Richter’s Ten Colours (1966) Copper Paintings (1960-61) o How much can be taken away from a painting and it still be a painting? o Removes even more from the canvas o Take the shape of letters: T, U, L H o More empty space than physical painting o Uses barnacle-inhibiting paint from painting his dad’s sailboat hull o Less absorbent paint than aluminum paint; needed to apply more layers for a substantial line o Grittiness of paint and reddish hue make these paintings even more sculptural o Robert Irwin notes: “that’s what you did with a Stella. You analyzed it, like an equation. You didn’t get religious.” o “What you see if what you see.” (said about Black Paintings) o HOW you see is very important o Phenomenology is big in art circles at the time o Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception (1945) huge for the minimalists; Stella never read it, but it’s in the air. o Could be seen as the “Early Renaissance of Minimalism” A prelude to Andre’s famous Cuts (1967) (Dwan Gallery) The Benjamin Moore Series (1961) o Uses color as if it is inert and hard (like the wall) o Titled after the American interior house paint company o Matte finish, “dead” o Tactile, like slabs collaged onto the wall o Lines taped, so no bleed – machinelike quality o Connects to Hofmann (push and pull) and Albers (Interaction of Color, 1963) (Concentric Square Series, 1950-76) The Concentric Squares (1962-63) o Hyper-energized color combinations o Kaleidoscopic o Still using Benjamin Moore paints o Paints tightly masked stripes in a concentric manner o How much color can you fit into one painting? o Uses a system to choose colors – predetermined rules relate to conceptualism “Color progression schemes” “Color opposition schemes” Begins with seven colors (ROYGBIV)
Doesn’t always start with red, but always follows the progression o Also paints Double Concentric Squares o Optically confusing and dazzling o We try to reason out the system used o Frustrated that we can’t look at both squares at once! o See Robert Morris’s use of the gestalt (an organized whole that is perceived as more than the sum of its parts.) Mitered Mazes (1962-63) o Color sequences are broken into four quadrants o Divided by four diagonal lines creating an “x” o One of the four lines doesn’t start at corner, creates a disjunction o Appears to be spinning, like a pinwheel o Relates to Synchromists (founded 1912, American) - abstract "synchromies" based on an approach to painting that analogized color to music; among the first abstract paintings in American art. Purple Paintings (1963) o Greenberg promotes Stella’s materiality and flatness o Defining of late-Modernist painting o Stella: “what the best art does is give us the best of both worlds – the perceptual and the pictorial.” o The central, empty section of the canvas is radically enlarged (he had made a small hole in the center of some Aluminum Paintings) The painting a frame for the wall Each one named after a friend Tongue-in-cheek set of abstract portraits Acknowledge the wall as a partner in modernist abstraction “Those holes in the paintings offered a peek into sitespecificity...the next step would be to simply eliminate the canvas and paint directly on the wall, which fortunately he never did.” – LeWitt Makes the wall part of the picture plane Hybrid space – both pictorial and literal See Stella’s Norton lectures titled “Working Space” (1983-84) for a detailed investigation of space in painting’s history. Notched V / Running V Series (1964-65) o Thinking back to the Copper paintings, the V is a naturally notched form o Suggests a directional force, like an arrow o Large and hefty paintings o Have an aerodynamic quality o The Running Vs seem to dance across the wall; strong directionality o Muted, similar colors: “When you have four vectored V's moving against each other, if one jumps out, you dislocate the plane and destroy the whole thing entirely.”
o Auping sees these as a new category of expressionist abstraction (connecting Ab Ex and Minimalism) Translates the gestural side of Ab Ex into sleek geometric form The Moroccan Series (1964-65) o Partially inspired by bright Arabic tile patterns o Uses fluorescent paint o Absorbs and reflects light intensely o Color seems to swell from the surface o Best viewed from a distance o Illusionism destroys the flat objectness of painting o The painting’s presence radiates into the room Irregular Polygons (1965-66) o Stella begins shaping his canvases in a more radical way o Asymmetrical forms o Even thicker stretcher bars o Brightly-colored planes give the sense of instability o Huge size, so the wall is fully engaged o 11 different compositions in the series; 4 versions of each composition o Due to thickness of the stretcher bars, the paintings seem stacked together – Objects! o Some look like giant origami; looks like the forms have been pushed together “When I pushes the bands into the rectangle or the square, they had a really interesting quality. You could feel something like what happens when you make sculpture, when you are pushing something together…like it was spring-loaded and about to shoot into space.” o Looks to Russian Suprematism and Constructivism Malevich Lissitsky – reveals potential space for abstract painting; Proun rooms (Malevich’s planar vocab of pure, abstract form + real space) “An interchange between painting and architecture Canvas treated as a building site! o Stella questioning the future of abstract painting and the form it would take o Auping sees them as a link between Cubism and American sculpture in the 1950s (David Smith’s Cubis and Tony Smith’s crystalline geometries) Protractor Paintings (1967-71) o Recall abstract frescoes – near-architectural scale o Many named after Near and Middle Eastern cities o Shapes hail from the ancient drafting tool o Looks to Pollock’s layering & patterning and manuscript illumination (very pared down)
Linear interlacing o Seen by many as too decorative “There is nothing wrong with abstraction being liked outside the art world. There is the implication that it makes you less intelligent. Sometimes I think you could argue the opposite.” The perfect example of popular abstraction –Baldessari “Decorative” a dirty word = pretty Matisse a big influence “The powerful assault of the senses” and “physical presence of color” Polish Village Series (1971-73) o A series of sculptural paintings o Named after all the Polish synagogues destroyed by the Nazis during WWII o Used a computer to diagram the compositions, then a computer-assisted table saw for the cuts of the places Often used left-overs from these cuts to add to his compositions This form of recycling continues in his later series o Blend of illusionistic space with physical space (pictorial vs. literal) o Began as large-scale collages in which the surface physicality was slowly developed (used paper and felt cut-out shapes applied to canvas) o Plywood, pressboard, and Masonite mounted on wood Later casts some in aluminum honeycombed panels fitted tightly together, creating a seamless object o Not simply shaped canvases, but fitted parts o Tongue-in-groove construction references the architectural subjects of the titles o Stella’s work of the ‘70s influences architect Frank Gehry “Peeling” the planes of architecture away to “create layers of exterior space” o Planes that are closer to the wall often painted in colors that expand, and vice versa A challenge for the viewer to readily identify the space An extension of Minimalism’s tenant that the viewer needs to move around a piece to fully appreciate its gestalt o The idea of building a painted object out from the wall not novel Louise Nevelson, John Chamberlain, James Rosenquist all do this in the ‘60s Stella unique in that he identifies as a painter, not a sculptor Brazilian Bird Series (1974-75) o Carries on Stella’s interest in thick planes o This times, cuts them into thinner, sleeker wedges o Geometry as dynamic form!
o Stella became interested in birds via his wife, Harriet McGurk A visit to the FL Everglades impressed upon him the ability of the birds to both stand out and camouflage themselves “They were like Impressionistic gestures that came in and out of focus in the space of the landscape.” o As Auping states, some of these gestures appear to fly off the wall Not representative of birds, but allusional Analogy to flight is literal Sleek, radical triangles take on a wing-like quality Many of the gestures have become disengaged from the ground, invisibly connected to an interior support Thus, they appear to hover in front of the painting o The surfaces of the ground and some of the shapes are etched with circular, gestural marks Reveal hard metal beneath Resemble vibrating planes or geometric feathers o Stella not sure how to classify them at the time Very relief-like But not sculpture, as Stella intended for them to be seen head-on Exotic Bird Series (1976-80) o 1975: Purchases a set of commercial templates (ship curves, railroad curves, and French curves) used for technical and mechanical drawings in the fields of boat building, railroad track construction, and architecture o Uses these to create preparatory drawings for the series o Stella cut these shapes out, suspended them in a picture-like rectangle, and combined them with hand-painted and hand-etched markings. Roy Lichtenstein and Gerhard Richter also using abstract painted gestures in their work in the ‘70s (the dead gesture) In contrast, Stella revives the gesture! Auping calls it “abstract pictorial theater” The Indian Birds (1977-79) o Continue to allusion to birds and flight o Even more densely layered o Uses a vocabulary of curved and twisting materials mixed with handdrawing and painting o Evolved in stages Begins with drawings Progresses with collages and maquettes Ends with metal fabrications Circuit Series (1980-84) o Come naturally from the weightless, motion-filled compositions of the many “Birds” series o Density and accumulation of gestural signatures increases
o Titles refer to automobile racing tracks Blue-collar side of Stella According to the artist, “car racing involves a particular kind of perception…you experience line and space very quickly. A painting is a very compressed frame that you look at in time, but more slowly. However, you can make the painting speed up.” o Gesture and space become super-elastic and hyper o Erratic curvatures suggest color, speed, and vibration (they move the eye rapidly around the painting) o Auping sees them as a gestural version of the ‘60’s Concentric Squares o A pictorial AND literal spatial experience! Cones and Pillars Series (1984-87) o Follows Cezanne’s assertion that a painter should organize, or abstract, nature into cylinders, spheres, and cones o Stella doesn’t use reductionist abstraction, but adds as much to abstraction as possible (anti-minimalist) o The shapes in this series come from abstract imagery in a cycle of prints Stella made that was inspired by El Lissitsky’s Had Gadya lithographs (1919). Had Gadya based on the folk song sung following Seder (religious meal served in Jewish homes on the first or second night of Passover) Stella struck by the fact that Lissitsky, as an abstract painter, addressed narrative (these works were representational) The folk song build on itself, with each new phrase adding to the list of phrases, which is always repeated. Stella saw this build-up as analogous to the creative process (additive) o Reminded him of his work, and of Jasper Johns’s statement: “Take an object. Do something to it. Do something else to it.” Stella creates his own narrative of abstract characters Cones and pillars “A battle of forms fighting for position in the paintings” Also inspired by Cezanne and late-19th century diagrammatic drawing in an architectural treatise on classical stone cutting. Stella titles the works after a cycle of Italian folktales selected and retold by author Italo Calvino (1956) Calvino recast the stories to make them more generally accessible
Paintings titled AFTER their completion (be careful of attributing too much narrative illustration to Stella’s “literary” series; he often matched titles to works after their were created, not before.) Loomings Series (1986-88) o Shows the dense, postmodern landscape of Stella’s own artistic history o Recycles previously used forms o Some of these works blend into the Moby Dick Series (see next entry) o The Loomings titles give us much information, and tell us that once certain formal arrangements are finalized, they are available as a sort of library of forms (available to be repeated in different variations, at a range of sizes, and with myriad painted treatments). o In total, the exhaustive nature of Stella’s cataloguing system shows an inclination toward seriality, formal variance, and perhaps a penchant for quasi-mechanical production (think of the Irregular Polygons, which are four versions of eleven different compositions – the logic of the copy on display). First letter (“S,” for example) is from Stella’s own studio cataloguing system It corresponds to a dominant form within that particular piece (shows that the piece belongs to a certain family of shapes) No metaphoric meaning The number after the letter signifies differences between versions within that specific group; tells us which variation it is (1, 2, and so on…) The element after that first number (“3X,” for example) shows a designation of scale, as in “three times” larger; the piece is three times larger than the “1X” example. Pieces in a group are editioned in a group of multiple identical copies. Finally, “2nd version: points to the ultimate variation within this group o Registers a unique surface treatment – painted or etched Moby Dick Series (1986-97) o 266 unique artworks produced o Each references one of the 135 chapters in Melville’s novel, plus his “Etymology,” “Extracts,” and “Epilogue” sections. o Not clear where the series begins and ends o This series shows and increasing formal complexity as the series evolves o Often framed in terms of a “narrative turn” in Stella’s work o Again, works titled after they are completed, so not meant to directly illustrate the novel
o Saw beluga whale at aquarium with his two sons – made him think of Melville’s novel o The compositions often recall the presence of the ocean (waves, swells, movement, etc.) Begins with a wave-like form in his abstract illustrations of Had Gadya o Concepts of the wave and the whale are massive gestural forces o The search for the “great white whale” becomes a metaphor for artistic work. o Stella enters the realm of freestanding sculpture Cast and poured steel assemblages Rusted from being outside “Stella brought his expanded idea of painting into the medium of raw steel.” Stella’s 3-D murals are filled with the history of his studio debris Bali Series (2002-09) o Like his “Easel Paintings,” Stella making large, 3-D constructions o Look like sails in a gust of air o Sail-like forms seem to glide out from the wall o Very interested in sails, the “first unstretched canvas” –Stella o Expressive entities that operate in open space Imaginary Landscapes (1994-2004) o 1992: Invited to do a project for the Princess of Wales Theater in Toronto o Paints huge murals that cover the architecture Fantasy imagery covers 10,000 square-foot theater Collages images from his visual vocabulary to form a language for the space o The subtract and semi-abstract forms are the basis for Imaginary Landscapes Titles based on Dictionary of Imaginary Places (1980) by Alberto Manguel and Gianni Guadalupi Consolidates the most famous fantasy landscapes in literature Appeals to Stella’s interest in the fantasy aspect of utopian abstraction as invented “space-scapes” – desire to inhabit those fantasy places o Smoke as a shape enters his work Stella interested in formation made by cigar smoke Hollis Frampton’s 1971 film Nostalgia, documents Stella blowing a long smoke ring Sculptural! Intrinsically part of space “I’ve always wished I could do that with a painted gesture.” 1990: His assistants arranged an 8-foot square box with lights and 6 synchronized cameras; he blew smoke into the box
Images fed into 3D imaging programs to create 3D computer maps of the shapes Matisse’s cutout, computerized and objectified Scarlatti K Series (2006) o Inspired by the sonatas of Baroque Harpsichordist Domenico Scarlatti o Looks at close correlation between abstraction and music Kandinsky argued that abstract painting could elicit the same emotional responses as music 3-footed paintings Touch both wall and floor Viewer must move around the works to take them in (sculptural) Stella makes Kandinsky’s abstract space real Circus of Pure Feeling for Malevich, 4 Square Circuits, 16 Parts (2009) o Made of wooden tables with small gestural constructions on top o Title refers to Malevich’s White on White (1918) o Malevich believed in an emotion-centered definition of abstraction o The title and the small, coiled forms refer to Calder’s Circus (1926-31), where he twisted wires into small circus performers on a large, table-like platform o Stella paying homage to two pioneering figured of abstraction o “Materiality and gesture make space.” o It’s all about space, really.
Note: Those series represented in the Modern’s exhibition are all listed. There are series not listed here, and the total number of the artist’s series is nebulous. Helpful links: http://www.guggenheim.org/new-york/collections/collection-online/artists/bios/809 http://www.nga.gov/content/ngaweb/features/the-serial-impulse/frank-stella.html http://www.moma.org/collection/artists/5640
