Page 53 - Studio International - September 1970

originator could really begin, as if they were unachieved in Neil Williams, exploratory in
analogous to the Erased de Kooning. That Richard Smith—has anything like the total
doesn't seem true; they are too full of their authority of Stella's rightness. The copper and
own artistic personality for that, just simply aluminium paintings proved it, time and
too good to be thought of as a mere gesture. again, and did so without recourse to any
They have a remarkable impact, and a blandishments. Stella's absoluteness, the to-
difficult one to define, both bland and lower- tally succinct creation of a single entity,
ing, both menacing and human. They got a allowed no power to a spectator's ability to
lot of abuse when first shown. Stella is develop his feelings over the work; the terms
perhaps the last major artist to have begun were Stella's and you had to take them whole.
his public career with a really bad press, and This is so even when Stella states his problems
this could well be, as Rubin suggests, the rather than his solutions, which is a possible
result of the remarkable challenge of these reading of paintings like jasper's Dilemma,
paintings. Hyena Stomp (in the Tate) and Sidi Ifni, a
They were so completely unlike the prevailing remarkable tour de force in its tight control of
but fading art of the fifties. When the field for ten Day-Glo hues. The relentless pressure of
innovation suddenly became very open Stella's career is one that has come to seem so
around 1959 and 1960, Stella's paintings much a part of his character as a painter that
took their place with some difficulty (he one is disinclined to believe that he has 4
Frank Stella
never hangs well with anyone else, for a start), relaxed in any way, or indeed that one paint- Gezira 1960
as though people were unprepared to read ing might be less accomplished than any Enamel on canvas
122 x 73 in.
the paintings for what they were, for just what other. The irregular polygons represented not Coll: Jean Christophe Castelli, New York
they contained. Stella himself growled about so much a change of style as an enlargement 5
this in his letter to the press, insisting on that of his style. There was no let-up, and carping Frank Stella
Sinjerli II 1967
obdurate limitation to the facts that he and worries (why worry?) about their incipient Polymer and fluorescent polymer paint on canvas
Donald Judd have elevated into a tough, illusionism are beside the point. In reproduc- 120 in. dia.
Coll: Mr and Mrs S. Brooks Barron, Detroit
hard-headed integrity; 'It is an observable tion, on the other hand, some of the protractor
physical fact that I have laid down paint in series look slightly feeble. There have been so
certain spaces and have not done so in others. many of the protractors, and there were so
Those who battle for the claims of taste should few of them in this show, that one can't judge.
remind themselves occasionally that the arts But Hiraqla I, and especially Khurasan Gate
are based on concrete data.' A somewhat un- Variation I, both look wonderful in the Hay-
concrete painter with whom Stella was ward. I wish that the exhibition had included
occasionally confused at this time was Rein- the twelve-foot-square canvases shown at
hardt, simply because of the colour black. Waltham last year; by all accounts they are
Reinhardt's meditativeness was a long way an even larger achievement. At thirty-four,
from Stella, however. He took most from Stella is taking on a quite awesome quality.
Johns, especially in the three very interesting Michael Fried's verb for the immediate
paintings in the Hayward from his last months physical effect of certain Stella paintings was
at Princeton, which use Johns's repetition, his that they 'stamp out' their shapes. A quite
wholeness of field, and something of his different experience is offered by the Rothko
brushwork. These pictures were made im- paintings which have now been installed in
provisationally, but without rhetoric; Johns the Tate Gallery. This was not easily done
is notably an artist that instills deliberation in (though it has been done with huge success)
those who have been effected by him. and I'm told that the lighting in particular
The black paintings were to some extent gave trouble. Rothko's pictures, especially the
improvised, and were drawn freehand. One later ones, work best in a rather dimmer light
can feel the brushing, can see that they wobble than is normal in galleries. This series,
sometimes towards a slight variation from dependent to some extent on the light-
their parallels, that there are slight variations absorbing quality of black, is of immense
in the width of the bands. The simpler ones, emotional gravity. Every visitor comments on
like Tomlinson Court Park and Die Fahne Hoch, the sensation of entering a place of religious
seem most complete, conceivably because of worship, and their remarkable physical effect
art-historical hindsight; for paintings like is apparent as voices are naturally hushed and
Tuxedo Park and Gezira indicate a completion the pace of the normal gallery walkaround is
of their pattern beyond the frame, and one is slowed. They are probably the deepest
aware that the shaping of the canvas and expression of a certain meditative tradition in
strict relationship of motif and field is the next modern painting whose two masters are
step that Stella will make. Stella began to Reinhardt and Rothko; a tradition that is
notch his pictures on the finely intuitive quite alien to Western visual culture in that
advice of his friend Darby Bannard, but it eschews the effect of the instantaneous
Bannard can't have seen what would become image. Just as Reinhardt's pictures need an
of it. Stella's shaped canvas has come to seem extended viewing time before their close-
like one of the heroic moves of modern art, all toned grids begin to work, so, too, do Rothko's
the more so because (with the exception of quieten our hurrying before they reveal their
Noland, whose motives were not the same) nobility. The Rothko room in the Tate must
no other use of shape—glib in Sven Rukin, be one of the most serious places in the world.