Frank Stella is one of my favorite living masters. It's interesting to look at his work and see how it has changed over time from the early geometric paintings to his more recent explosive, three-dimensional pieces.These huge artworks fabricated of printed and painted metal shapes have inspired me over the past couple of decades. I was fortunate to have viewed one of these in an Iowa art museum in the 1980's. I remember discovering this amazing, lively piece occupying an entire wall in one of the gallery spaces. It literally made me gasp out loud. The colors, patterns, shapes, movement and sheer size were overwhelming. The power of the thing caused an emotional response that surprised me. The painting I've included here, "The Pequod Meets the Bachelor", 1988, is similar to the one I found in Iowa that day. Stella produced a large body of paintings and prints based on Melville's "Moby Dick", and this is an example from that long series.What was so amazing to me at the time and is to this day is that he has freed the subject from the confines of the canvas rectangle so that it occupies real space. He has reversed the idea of the viewer entering the world of the painting by bringing the painting into the world of the viewer. In fact, it's difficult to tell if this is now a sculpture rather than a painting. But, it is a painting.
Comparing the above work to an early piece, one can see the relationship in Stella's focus on shape and pattern, but the experience is like comparing the butterfly to the caterpillar. To the right is "Tomlinson Court Park", 1959. It is precise and austere, contrasting drastically with the free flamboyance of the later work. The qualities of his early paintings are discernible even through the metamorphic transformation that leaves us in wonder at his newer three-dimensional explosions.
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