emotional, held sacrosanct in the 1950s. Even more than the flags, targets, and number charts of Johns, chosen for the same exhibition, Stella's paintings looked insolently static, intractably single minded. Willfully rivaling the Abstract Expressionists by perpetuating their heroic, mural scale, these four canvasses (each over 9 feet high or wide) appeared to empty that tradition of its emotional fervor and visual complexity. . . 5
Stella continued in this tradition, and by the mid 1960s was using what one critic called "fluorescent pewter colors" to make a statement about the awareness of shape and size within the rubric of exhibition. Fo
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