FRANK STELLA, quotes on his painting art in American Minimalism by the famous American artist + biography facts
Frank Stella, (1936 -), quotes on his American painting and print art sculpture in Minimalism and post-painterly Painting + life + biography facts of the artist. Stella’s quotes clarify his development as a painter. Stella preferred to use from 1960 copper and aluminium paint, painted in regular lines of color separated by pinstripes. A close artist friend of Frank Stella is the famous American sculptor Carl Andre.
* At the bottom more biography facts & art links for Frank Stella.
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Frank Stella: ‘Hampton Roads’, painting of 1961 |
Frank Stella, quotes on artist life and his painting art in American Minimalism
– 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 learning something and the second is making something.
* Stella’s quote on painting art, taken from ‘The Pratt lecture’, 1960, in “Frank Stella: The Black Paintings”, Baltimore Museum of art, 1976; as quoted in “Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art, – a source-book of Artist’s writings”, ed. Kristine Stiles / Peter Selz, University of California Press, London, England, 1996, p. 113
– I can’t stress enough how important it is, if you are interested at all in painting, to look and to look a great deal at painting. There is no other way to find out about painting. After looking comes imitating. In my own case it was at first largely a technical immersion. How did Kline put down that color? Why did Guston (American famous painter, fh) leave the canvas bare at the edges? Why did H. Frankenthaler (American woman artist in Abstract Expressionism and married with Jackson Pollock, fh) used unsized canvas. And so on.
* Stella’s statement on painting art, taken from ‘The Pratt lecture’, 1960, in “Frank Stella: The Black Paintings”, Baltimore Museum of art, 1976; as quoted in “Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art, – a source-book of Artist’s writings”, ed. Kristine Stiles / Peter Selz, University of California Press, London, England, 1996, p. 113
– I got tired of other’s people painting and began to make my own paintings. I found, however, that I not only got tired of looking at my own paintings but that I also didn’t like painting them at all. The painterly problems of what to put here and there and how to do it to make it go with what was already there, became more and more difficult and the solutions more and more unsatisfactory. Until finally it became obvious that there had to be a better way.
* Stella’s remark on his personal development in painting art, taken from his lecture ‘The Pratt lecture’ in 1960, in “Frank Stella: The Black Paintings”, Baltimore Museum of art, 1976; as quoted in “Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art, – a source-book of Artist’s writings”, ed. Kristine Stiles / Peter Selz, University of California Press, London, England, 1996, p. 113
– There were two problems which had to be faced. One was spatial and the other methodological. In the first case I had to do something about relational painting, i. e. the balancing of the various parts of the painting with and against each other. The obvious answer was symmetry – make it the same all over. The question still remained, though, of how to do this in depth. A symmetrical image or configuration symmetrically placed on a open ground is not balanced out in the illusionistic space. The solution I arrived at, and there are probably quite a few, although I only know of one other, color density, forces illusionistic space out of the painting at constant intervals by using a regulated pattern. The remaining problem was simply to find a method of paint application which followed and complemented the design solution. This was done by using the house painters technique and tools.
* quote by Stella on two problems for his painting art and the essence of space, taken from his lecture ‘The Pratt lecture’, 1960, in “Frank Stella: The Black Paintings”, Baltimore Museum of art, 1976; as quoted in “Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art, – a source-book of Artist’s writings”, ed. Kristine Stiles / Peter Selz, University of California Press, London, England, 1996, p. 114
– There’s always been a trend toward simpler painting and it was bound to happen one way or another. Whenever painting gets complicated, like Abstract Expressionism, or surrealism, there’s going to be someone who’s not painting complicated paintings, someone who’s trying to simplify…
* quote by Frank Stella on his painting and the meaning of simplicity, taken from his lecture ‘The Pratt lecture’, 1960, in “Frank Stella: The Black Paintings”, Baltimore Museum of art, 1976; as quoted in “Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art, – a source-book of Artist’s writings”, ed. Kristine Stiles / Peter Selz, University of California Press, London, England, 1996, p. 117
– You are always related (as an creating artist, fh) to something. I’m related to the more geometric, or simpler, painting, but the motivation doesn’t have anything to do with that kind of European geometric painting I think the obvious comparison with my work would be Vasarely, and I can’t think of anything I like less… …the ‘Groupe de recherché d’Art visuel’ actually painted all the patterns before I did – all the basic designs that are in my painting – I didn’t even know about it… …it still doesn’t have anything to do with my painting. I find all that European geometric painting – sort of post Max Bill school – a kind of curiosity, very dreary..
* Stella’s artist quote on the impact of the geometric simple painter artists on his art, taken from ‘Questions to Stella and Judd’, Bruce Glaser, in ‘Art New 65’ no 5. September 1966; as quoted in “Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art, – a sourcebook of Artist’s writings”, ed. Kristine Stiles / Peter Selz, University of California Press, London, England, 1996, p. 117
– Ken Noland has put things in the center and I’ll use a symmetric pattern, but we use symmetry in a different way (as the idea of making balance by the European geometric abstract art those days, fh). It’s non-relational. In the newer American painting we strive to get the thing in the middle, and symmetrical, but just to get a kind of force, just to get the thing on the canvas. The balance factor isn’t important.
* Stella’s artist quote on the impact of the geometric simple painter artists on his art, selected from ‘Questions to Stella and Judd’, Bruce Glaser, in ‘Art New 65’ no 5. September 1966; as quoted in “Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art, – a sourcebook of Artist’s writings”, ed. Kristine Stiles / Peter Selz, University of California Press, London, England, 1996, p. 118
– Ken Noland would use concentric circles; he’d want to get them in the middle (of the painting, fh) because it’s the easiest way t get them there, and he want them there in the front, on the surface of the canvas. If you’re that much involved with the surface of anything, you’re bound to find symmetry the most natural means.
* Stella’s artist quote on the question of symmetry in American modern painting art, selected from ‘Questions to Stella and Judd’, Bruce Glaser, in ‘Art New 65’ no 5. September 1966; as quoted in “Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art, – a sourcebook of Artist’s writings”, ed. Kristine Stiles / Peter Selz, University of California Press, London, England, 1996, p. 118
– (in reaction on Donald Judd who emphasis the ‘whole’ of an art-work, fh): But we’re still left with structural or compositional elements. The problems aren’t any different. I still have to compose a picture, and if you make an object (as Judd makes, fh) you have to organize the structure. I don’t think our work that radical in any sense because you don’t find any really new compositional or structural element. I don’t know if that exists. It’s like the idea of the color you haven’t seen before. Does something exist that’s as radical as a diagonal that’s not a diagonal? Or a straight line or a compositional element that you can’t describe?
* Stella’s remark on the question of finding new compositional or structural elements in American modern painting art, selected from ‘Questions to Stella and Judd’, Bruce Glaser, in ‘Art New 65’ no 5. September 1966; as quoted in “Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art, – a sourcebook of Artist’s writings”, ed. Kristine Stiles / Peter Selz, University of California Press, London, England, 1996, p. 119
– The artist’s tool or the traditional artist’s brush and maybe even oil paint are all disappearing very quickly. We use mostly commercial paint, and we generally tend toward lager brushes. In a way, Abstract Expressionism started this all. De Kooning used house painter’s brushes and house painters’ techniques.
* ‘Questions to Stella and Judd’, Bruce Glaser, in ‘Art New 65’ no 5. September 1966; as quoted in “Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art, – a source-book of Artist’s writings”, ed. Kristine Stiles / Peter Selz, University of California Press, London, England, 1996, p. 120
– Yes, the aluminium paint…. What happened, at least for me, is that when I first started painting I would see Pollock, de Kooning, and the one thing they all had that I didn’t have was an art school background. They were brought up on drawing and they all ended up painting or drawing with the brush. They got away from the smaller brushes and, in an attempt to free themselves, they got involved in commercial paint and house-painting brushes, Still it was basically drawing with paint, which has the characterized almost all twentieth century painting. The way my own painting was going, drawing was less and less necessary. It was the one thing I wasn’t going to do. I wasn’t going to draw with the brush.
* Stella’s quote on how using his paint, taken from ‘Questions to Stella and Judd’, Bruce Glaser, in ‘Art New 65’ no 5. September 1966; as quoted in “Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art, – a source-book of Artist’s writings”, ed. Kristine Stiles / Peter Selz, University of California Press, London, England, 1996, p. 120
– I found out that I just didn’t have anything to say in those terms (as handwriting in paint, like De Kooning and other Abstract Expressionists,fh) I didn’t want to mask variations; I didn’t want to record a path. I wanted to get the paint out of the can and onto the canvas. …I tried to keep the paint as good as it was in the can.
* his quote on how using and brushing with paint without the track of a gesture – taken from ‘Questions to Stella and Judd’, Bruce Glaser, in ‘Art New 65’ no 5. September 1966; as quoted in “Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art, – a source-book of Artist’s writings”, ed. Kristine Stiles / Peter Selz, University of California Press, London, England, 1996, p. 120
– When Louis Morris showed in 1958, everybody (like in the art-magazine Art News, by critic Tom Hess, fh) dismissed his work as thin, merely decorative. They still do. Louis is the really interesting case. In every sense his instincts were Abstract Expressionist, and he was terribly involved with all of that, but he felt he had to move, too… .My painting is based on the fact that only what can be seen there is there. It really is an object. Any painting is an object and anyone who gets involved enough in this finally has to face up to the objectness of whatever it is that he’s doing. He is making a thing…. …all I want anyone to get out of my paintings, and all I ever get out of them, is the fact that you can see the whole idea without any confusion… …What you see is what you see.
* Stella’s quote on the flatness of the paint on thew canvas and the directness of the painted image without any confusion, taken from ‘Questions to Stella and Judd’, Bruce Glaser, in ‘Art New 65’ no 5. September 1966; as quoted in “Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art, – a source-book of Artist’s writings”, ed. Kristine Stiles / Peter Selz, University of California Press, London, England, 1996, p. 121
– My painting is based on the fact that only what can be seen is there. It really is an object.. ..and anyone who gets involved enough in this, finally has to face up to the objectness of whatever its is, that he’s doing; he is making a thing (his remark in 1964
* Stella’s quote from 1964, on his painting style like being an object, from ‘Abstract Art’, Anna Moszynska, Thames and Hudson 1990, page 202
– One could stand in front of any Abstract-Expressionist work for a long time, and walk back and forth, and inspect the depths of the pigment and the inflection and all the painterly brushwork for hours. But I wouldn’t particularly want to do that and also I wouldn’t ask anyone to do that in front of my paintings. To go further, I would like to prohibit them from doing that in front of my painting. That’s why I make the paintings the way they are, more or less…
* his critical quote on painting of Abstract Expressionism art style, and his option – taken from ‘Questions to Stella and Judd’, Bruce Glaser, in ‘Art New 65’ no 5. September 1966; as quoted in “Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art, – a source-book of Artist’s writings”, ed. Kristine Stiles / Peter Selz, University of California Press, London, England, 1996, p. 122
– Clement Greenberg (famous art-critic in that period and important for the development of Abstract Expressionism and Color Field painting, fh) talked about the ideas or possibilities of painting in, I think, ‘After Abstract Expressionism’ article, and he allows a blank canvas to be an idea for a painting. It might not be a good idea, but it’s certainly valid. Yves Klein did the empty gallery. He sold air, and that was a conceptualized art, I guess.
* his critical quote on painting of Abstract Expressionism art style, and his option – taken from ‘Questions to Stella and Judd’, Bruce Glaser, in ‘Art New 65’ no 5. September 1966; as quoted in “Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art, – a source-book of Artist’s writings”, ed. Kristine Stiles / Peter Selz, University of California Press, London, England, 1996, p. 122
– If you don’t know what Reinhardt’s paintings are about, you don’t know what painting is about
* Stella’s remark after after Reinhardt’s death in 1967, taken from ‘Abstract Expressionism’, David Anfam, Thames and Hudson Ltd London, 1990
– The idea in being a painter is to declare an identity. Not just my identity, an identity for me, but an identity big enough for everyone to share in. Isn’t that what it’s all about?
* Stella’s remark on creating an identity in art, from ‘The New York school – the painters & sculptors of the fifties’, Irving Sandler, Harper & Row, Publishers, 1978, p. 307
– I think I had been badly affected by… …the romance of Abstract Expressionism… …particularly as it filtered out to places like Princeton and around the country, which was the idea of the artist as a terrifically sensitive ever-changing, ever ambitious person, particularly (as described) in magazines like Art News and Arts, which I read religiously… …I began to feel very strongly about finding a way that wasn’t so wrapped up in the hullabaloo… …something that stable in a sense, something that wasn’t constantly a record of your sensitivity, a record of flux.
* his remark on gestural painting and its magic impact on him in his early artistic life, from ‘Frank Stella’, Rubin, p. 13, as quoted in ”The New York school – the painters & sculptors of the fifties’ Irving Sandler, Harper & Row, Publishers, 1978, p. 307
– The thing that struck me most was the way he stuck to the motif (in his ‘Flags and Targets’ paintings, painted by Jasper Johns, fh)… …the idea of stripes – the rhythm and the interval – the idea of repetition. I began to think a lot about repetition. (around 1960’s)
* ‘The New York school – the painters & sculptors of the fifties’ Irving Sandler, Harper & Row, Publishers, 1978, pp. 215-216
Frank Stella, some art links for more information on life and artist biography facts and characteristic images of Stella
