Frank Stella 1936-

By Zachary Vincent

Frank Stella, One Small Goat Papa Bought for Two Zuzim, from Illustrations after El Lissitzky's Had Gadya, 1984, lithograph, linocut, and screenprint with hand colouring and collage on wove paper. Courtesy of Christie’s.

The enigma at the heart of Frank Stella’s work is the incredible diversity of media and styles he has used to probe at the same pressing issues he has always been interested in. Present in the American artist’s practice is a sense of great continuity of theme and great change in method, which makes examining his career particularly interesting. Stella is both a pioneering minimalist and a self-proclaimed ‘maximalist’, a geometric abstractionist and a narrative illustrator. The common thread throughout the art of Frank Stella from the 1950s to the present day is his commitment to producing art which explores the concept of space in its creation, expression, and reception.

While Stella’s home has been in New York City since 1958, much of his artistic practice owes a debt to his earlier roots. Born on 12th May 1936 in Malden, Massachusetts to an Italian American family of doctors and amateur artists, Stella’s first experiences with paint were tied to working on houses and boats. This type of work, and the specialised tools which went with it, were important in convincing Stella of his ability to become an artist despite his lack of representational artistic skills. Studying history and art history at Princeton University, Stella was exposed to the art of the past in the likes of Degas and Mondrian, as well as to the figures which would be most influential in his early artistic days: Kline, Pollock, and Jasper Johns.

Painting was purely a means of passing the time until Stella was drafted for service in the American military. That is, until he failed his army induction. Having moved to New York after university, Stella was in a place to begin the explorations which would make him a key figure in abstract painting. Beginning with squares and bands of colour, Stella worked to pare down his designs and to ask questions of perspective. His influential Black Paintings series of 1958-60 utilised the tools of a house painter to create works which were simple, but dynamic. His use of aluminium and enamel put the focus of the viewer on the surface of his paintings and the way the paint looked differently in different light. Stella was interested in the same themes as Kinetic artists, namely how perspective could change experience and meaning, but he approached this in pioneeringly minimalist way. His marriage to the art critic Barbara Rose and their collaboration on the exhibition Shape and Structure in 1965 helped to cement the public view of Stella as a minimalist painter. This era of public awareness of Stella’s work helped lead to his solo exhibition at the MoMA in 1970, at which point he was the youngest artist ever to have such an honour at the institution.

Frank Stella, however, was never to be contained by a single label. The later 1960s and 1970s saw his work become increasingly colourful and energetic, with complex shapes and bigger canvases. Eventually, his work spilled off the canvas and Stella began working in sculpture and architecture. In these fields, and in his painting as well, he remained interested in the creation of space by the artist and its reception by the viewer. ‘Maximalism’ was the term he used for his work at this time, as it embraced the complexity of movement and chaos of forms for its ability to convey different types of space.

Stella was important in transforming abstract art further in his 1980s engagement with narrative abstraction. While still definitively non-representational, Stella’s 1982-84 Had Gadya series took inspiration from the Russian artist El Lissitzky and his ability to represent, in lithographs, abstract works working alongside narrative literature. The literature came from a traditional Jewish folk song sung at Passover. Stella’s series engages with the song verse by verse, with the abstract forms changing to convey mood and space in correspondence with the literature itself. This new direction for abstract painting was applauded by critics, and Stella’s engagement with literature eventually led to his appointment as a Professor of Poetry at Harvard University.

Approaching his 87th birthday, Frank Stella is still artistically active and maintains a studio in New York. His work has come to experiment with the potential for technology in art, while continuing the theme of relational space. In his 60+ year career, Stella has never considered himself an artist. “I don’t need to be the artist […] I don’t have time to go out to the bar and be an artist.” Frank Stella has never been interested in the ‘social persona’ of the artist, as he has been too focused on creating art. While this may mean he is less popular today as a public figure than some other contemporary artists, he should be celebrated for his ceaseless commitment to experiment in medium and theme.

Bibliography 

“16 Things to Know About Frank Stella”. Christie’s. 22 April 2019. 16 things to know about artist Frank Stella | Christie's (christies.com). [Accessed 4 May 2023].

“Frank Stella”. Artnet. Frank Stella Biography – Frank Stella on artnet. [Accessed 4 May 2023].

Ostrow, Saul and Stella, Frank. “Frank Stella”. BOMB no. 17 (Spring 2000): 28-35. https://www.jstor.org/stable/40425965.

Stella, Frank and Solomon, Allan. “Frank Stella: Portions of an Interview”. Members Newsletter (Museum of Modern Art) no. 8 (Spring 1970): 1-4. https://www.jstor.org/stable/4380589.