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Tag Archives: cubism
Shaped Canvas 8
This piece by Martin Barré is very similar to another by François Morellet shown on this blog over a year ago. The continuation of the line across several discrete panels makes their edges more vivid—the panels punch holes in the … Continue reading
The Price of Greatness
Readers of this blog will know that I am a great admirer of the work of Frank Stella. It seems I’m in a minority. I was talking to a friend who calls him the Leroy Neiman of contemporary art, and … Continue reading
Stella’s Prints
I’ve been enjoying Stella’s prints, and discovering one series after another. Usually each new one is a challenge. I have the catalogue raisonné of the prints up to 1982, and look at it with pleasure every day. And the prints … Continue reading
The Planar Dimension
Been reading the catalog of a 1979 show at the Guggenheim Museum called The Planar Dimension. The essay by Margit Rowell can only be described as lucid and enlightening. Her discussion of Picasso’s constructions is brilliant, and the essay in … Continue reading
Posted in Principles of Abstraction
Tagged abstract art, abstraction, cubism, form, Frank Stella, Pablo Picasso, painted reliefs, shaped canvas
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Love Letters
I’ve been enjoying a group of small works in Stella’s Kleist series named after some of the writer’s love letters. Each one has a nice formal gesture; this piece, for example, has parts that swing up and down in opposite … Continue reading
Posted in American Modernism, Principles of Abstraction
Tagged abstract art, abstraction, cubism, Frank Stella, Pablo Picasso, painted reliefs, sculpture, sex, titles
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Is Painting Dead? Or Sculpture?
The preceding post weighed in with a few tons of metal—maybe too much of Stella’s sculpture all at once. But the ideas are not new to this blog. I’ve already mentioned Stephen Melville’s argument that sculpture has been liquidated between … Continue reading
Moving Out and Staying Back
I’m still getting great enjoyment out of Frank Stella’s Moby Dick series, which seems to be a kind of culmination. With the next series, built around the writings of Kleist, he gives up the method of constructing in superimposed planes … Continue reading
A Flat Bird
In the catalog of the Stella retrospective in Wolfsburg I find a surprising member of the Exotic Birds series. At eight feet wide it is hardly a sketch, but it looks exactly like the preliminary drawings for that series. Most … Continue reading
Posted in American Modernism, Principles of Abstraction
Tagged abstract art, abstraction, cubism, drawing, feeling, Frank Stella, illusion, painted reliefs
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Questionable or Not
On the British web site abstract critical there is more debate about Frank Stella. I’m on his side but most aren’t. Much of the criticism seems to be based on a perception that the work does not hold together formally—the … Continue reading
Slightly Overwhelming
I’m pretty familiar with the illustrations in Robert Wallace’s book on the Moby Dick series, but when I see the actual pieces don’t usually recognize them. There’s something about the size and detail and rawness of the works that stuns … Continue reading
The Facts
This blog has given a fair amount of time to Frank Stella, and my attention was moving to other things—there are a few posts coming up on the topic of time. However, my interest in Stella has just been revived … Continue reading
Unremarkable
I have a catalog from the Albright-Knox called American Painting of the Seventies. As it happens few of the included are what we would call 70s artists, they are mostly good artists who happened to be alive and working during … Continue reading
Posted in American Modernism
Tagged abstract art, abstraction, cubism, Frank Stella, painted reliefs, time, value
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Juam
One of the prints from the Imaginary Places series, “Juam,” offers a perspective on Stella’s overcrowded compositions. A first state—much lighter, less labored—was also released, described in a pamphlet dedicated to the piece. As usual the final state is over … Continue reading
Posted in American Modernism, Principles of Abstraction, Uncategorized
Tagged abstract art, abstraction, composition, cubism, Frank Stella, illusion, place, space
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Modes of Abstraction and Styles of Writing
Robert Wallace has shown me that I was mistaken about Stella’s work, as in fact many are. Though at first sight the Moby Dick works seem attractively chaotic, it would be wrong to assume that they have a fundamental arbitrariness, … Continue reading
Posted in American Modernism, Principles of Abstraction, Uncategorized
Tagged abstract art, abstraction, cubism, form, Frank Stella, literature, painted reliefs, series, titles
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Change, Evolution, Progress
Been reading Stephen Jay Gould’s Wonderful Life, finally, after long postponement. Well worth the time and effort. One point he makes, which can never bear too much repetition, is that evolution does not mean progress or development. We commonly use … Continue reading
Biomorphic
The previous comments on Hofmann and Stella started me thinking about this work. Most of the Moby Dick works combine the curvy forms of the wave/whale shapes with geometrical sections, but this one is completely biomorphic, maybe even expressionist. The … Continue reading
Picasso’s Tricks
I’m always struck by the fact that the most skilled artists, Picasso and Cézanne for two examples, go out of their way to plan pictures that they could carry off straight out, without much preparation. Whereas the average artist has … Continue reading
Complexity and Simplification
Throughout the twentieth century, the formal complexities of modernist art have driven artists to simplify and clarify their work. Judd and the other minimalists were doubtless right in their feeling that abstract painting had become too fiddly and fussy about … Continue reading
Modernist Method
An example of modernist practice in its purest form might be the paintings of Paul Klee. He starts with a formal idea, a method, a sense of how relationships should play out, and the work is generated from that. Whether … Continue reading
Posted in Abstraction and Society, American Modernism, Conceptualism and Painting, Ethics of Abstraction, Principles of Abstraction
Tagged abstract art, abstraction, Camille Pissarro, Cézanne, cubism, Dada, Frank Stella, labor, montage, Pablo Picasso, painted reliefs, Paul Klee, society, value
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Another Correction
Earlier I suggested that Frank Stella is the Picasso of the last half of the twentieth century, and that what gives him such an high stature is his capacity for change. I was a little doubtful at the time, and … Continue reading
Stella Live
I’ve loved Frank Stella’s work since I started in art, and have seen a few examples over the years. Readers of this blog will also know that I have a strong interest in the Moby Dick series, and I have … Continue reading
Entangled
The interlacing method offers a beautiful dance of forms, as complex and layered as one could want, unified through the unbroken flow of line. Clearly, this is an important source for Pollock. But also important are all the pictorial possibilities, … Continue reading
The Milliner’s Workshop
Maybe the most ambitious example of the interlacing style of cubism is this large piece by Picasso. That the labor represented is mimicked in the manner is interesting enough. But to show the potential of the interlacing method this piece … Continue reading
Posted in Italian Art, Principles of Abstraction
Tagged abstract art, abstraction, cubism, illusion, interlacing, labor, light, Pablo Picasso
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Overlapping, Interlacing
Arp’s figuration is a bit like Klee’s, it has an aura of innocence and a species of humor, both of which are bound to make it widely popular. But though it seems inoffensive and kind of cute at first meeting, … Continue reading
Posted in American Modernism, Principles of Abstraction
Tagged abstract art, abstraction, Arp, cubism, Frank Stella, illusion, interlacing, Linsley, painted reliefs, space
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Arp
A glance at Arp’s reliefs places him as one of Stella’s predecessors. In fact, Stella has acknowledged him. The work has a charming minor quality but is still thought provoking. In this piece, for example, it looks as if the … Continue reading
Posted in American Modernism, Principles of Abstraction
Tagged abstract art, abstraction, Arp, cubism, Frank Stella, Linsley, painted reliefs
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Profile
Some of the Moby Dick works present a clearly defined boundary or profile, which closes them off—at least from the front. From the side they will look very different. But what interests me is the articulation of form inside the … Continue reading
Posted in American Modernism, Principles of Abstraction
Tagged abstract art, abstraction, cubism, drawing, form, Frank Stella, illusion, Linsley, painted reliefs, space, transparency
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Painted Surfaces
With the very complexly painted Moby Dick pieces, the original paper sketch makes it much easier to see the underlying form. That the painting on top of the forms works to hide and confuse them, to make it difficult to … Continue reading
Posted in American Modernism
Tagged abstract art, abstraction, cubism, Frank Stella, literature, painted reliefs, shaped canvas
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Plurimi
It’s worth it to spend more time on the comparison in the preceding post, which doesn’t need much commentary. Plurimi is a made-up name. Two views of the same piece, which has a crystalline quality—enclosing parts of the viewing space … Continue reading
Emilio Vedova
The Plurimi of Emilio Vedova are clear precursors of Stella’s relief paintings, and the differences between the two groups of work are revealing. Vedova’s works had an origin in sets for an opera by Luigi Nono that he had done … Continue reading
Inventors of forms
Why abstraction has to be literary in some sense, is, as Stella has also pointed out, because otherwise it may not have enough of the meanings that we care about, that it may be thin, shallow and dessicated. As Wallace … Continue reading