Artist Frank Stella

One of the reasons for Stella's great popularity was the type of abstract painting that became popular in the late 1950s. It had been either previously overlooked, or underrated, by the majority of patrons and critics alike, but was now finding a larger market and more opportunities for exhibition. Thus,

. . . among the New York avantgarde, however, the near euphoria that had prevailed in the years following the war clearly began to disappear by the later 1950s. Ironically enough, at the very moment of its public triumph, Abstract Expressionism was experiencing a period of serious reappraisal and selfexamination, not to say a crisis of conviction. When Frank Stella, having just graduated from Princeton, threw himself into the life of the New York art world in 1958, [other prominent expressionists were no longer in the limelight]. . . The art that Stella saw around him was less that of the original pioneers of the new America

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t he did not find them meaningful. He felt that religious symbols or allusions had less referential potency over time than did political symbols or allusions.7 It is also interesting to note Stella's own thoughts on interpreting a painting, and the way he suggests that the viewer describe the canvass. First, Stella believes that there are two basic problems in painting. The first is the perception of the painting, or what the painting is, and the second to find out how the painting was crafted. It is possible to discover the first by looking at a large number of paintings, and possible to address the second by study and classes in technique. One may, however, find that it becomes maddening to take each part of the painting apart, and Stella himself found that he "not only got tired of looking at [his] own paintings but that [he] also didn't like painting them at all."8 The solution to this dilemma was to use both spatial and methodological changes in order to create something more pleasing in a visual as well as aesthetic sense, a hallmark of the type of painting of which Stella excels. In the same way, Stella's frustration with technique and geometric style may have helped to change his style and focus on more color,
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Approximate Word count = 2500
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page)