Don't merely think big, think off the charts - that's the Frank Stella that comes through in the first comprehensive U.S. overview of the artist's prolific output in almost three decades; the show opened at the de Young last week.
Over the course of a phenomenally productive, highly acclaimed, 60-year career, Stella has been an avatar of what's affectionately termed "artistic lawlessness." He has created thousands of artworks in multiple media, from prints and paintings to sculptural canvases and 3-D-printed maquettes, which trumpet their presence and are neither characterized by restraint in scale and ambition, nor confined to the quotidian boundaries of a standard canvas.
So one could understand the temptation to overdo it in a retrospective aiming for a fresh look at an influential figure who has become part of - or even one with - the cultural landscape. But FAMSF's curator in charge of American Art Timothy Anglin Burgard has resisted that impulse and chosen only 50 works, adhering to a less-is-more approach that serves both the subject and visitors well.
Unlike some members of his generation, Stella never flirted with figuration. He has the distinction of being one of the few postwar artists to have committed to abstraction throughout his entire career, defending, promoting and expanding both its definition and the very concept of painting. Constantly on the move, innovating, opening up new realms of possibility and breaking boundaries of picture-making by dynamiting traditional notions of space, he has exercised a take-no-prisoners fearlessness, armed with the inherent belief that a painting "can be anything."
He's credited with contributing more to the evolution of modern art than any other artist, but it's his daredevil instincts, his willingness to leap forward into uncharted waters, that may explain why he has remained prominent and prestigious for nearly 60 years in an arena as fickle as the art world. "I tried to keep the paint as good as it was in the can," he once observed, an epic understatement from someone who was a prodigy by his early 20s. A superstar right out of the gate, Stella rode the express train from Andover and Princeton in 1959 to New York, fame, money and critical approbation, which is not to say that all of his improvisations were universally well-received.
At the tender age of 23 he was included, along with Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg, in "Sixteen Americans," a pivotal 1960 show at NYMOMA. It featured his "Black Paintings," a series that shocked the populace and was perceived in some quarters as an attack on the high priests of abstract expressionism. The museum bought one that's shown here, "Die Fahne hoch!" (1959) ("The Banner High"), a precursor to minimalism that echoes Rothko. Named after a Nazi anthem with a title intended to provoke, its layered rows of black paint, interrupted by strips of unpainted surface, conform to the contours of the canvas. In hindsight, it's difficult to understand what all the fuss was about.
The exhibition's lean installation, stark in its simplicity and one of the most beautiful of the year, buoys the gargantuan eruptions of Stella's explosive imagination, showcasing the maximalist works, in particular, to full advantage. This is especially true of the architecturally inspired works such as the spectacular "Damascus Gate" ("Stretch Variation III") (1970), whose seamlessly integrated geometries glide like a huge ocean liner on the sea. At 10x50 feet, its colored stripes forming roads or arrows to uncertain destinations, bordered in contrasting black and curved on either end, it earns almost an entire wall to itself. (Many of the pieces are so large they had to be shipped in parts and assembled on site.)
Stella's expansive notion of painting is at full throttle in the whimsical, monumental sculptural canvases, which radiate boisterous shapes that protrude into the space. Sometimes you have the peculiar sensation you've wandered into the lair of a giant who left his playthings behind, like the jumbo collaged construction "Khar-pidda 5.5x" (1978), a mass highway interchange of three-dimensional swirling tracks sprayed with magenta glitter.
Curving and bending cubism for his own devices, each of the stupendous painted aluminum reliefs (1986-97) in the "Moby Dick" series takes its name from one of the 135 chapters in Herman Melville's novel. Metaphoric and as thrilling as a theme park ride, a feeling of perpetual motion infuses "The Whiteness of the Whale (IRS-1, 2X)" (1987), crested by a foamy teal-green wave, and the 10-foot-tall, five-part assembly "The Grand Armada (IRS-6, 1X)" (1989), where a wriggling Japanese-anime, black-finned whale seems to be slinking towards you, approximating the experience of creatures jutting into view when wearing 3-D glasses in a movie theater. If Captain Ahab had seen these, he might have stayed on land.
Like Hockney, Stella is on the hunt for new technologies. The final gallery is devoted to his recent adventures in 3-D printing, and given the size of these puppies, it must be one whopper of a machine. These later pieces, some of which suggest a cross between primitive walking robotics experiments and lunar landing modules gone bad, marshal an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink effort to defy the laws of gravity. Take the garish "redjang" (2009), a warped trampoline whose gelatinous orange fiberglass seat is anchored at such a precipitous angle it might catapult off its tubular steel frame, sling-shot style. "K.144" (2013), possibly inspired by Sputnik or listening to music, brings to mind those elementary school models of the solar system whose planetary orbits, represented by painted coils, emanate from a core that has a hole in its heart.
Stella at 80: Still crazy like a fox after all these years.
Through Feb. 26, 2017