Frank Stella Infosite
Frank Stella Quotes
• People say that the paintings are always big because they're striving for effect, but they're also big so that I don't trip over myself, so that I have room to work, and people can come in and be comfortable.
• Architecture can't fully represent the chaos and turmoil that are part of the human personality, but you need to put some of that turmoil into the architecture, or it isn't real
• One learns about painting by looking at and imitating other painters
• I don't like to say I have given my life to art. I prefer to say art has given me my life
• You see what you know!
• I don't like a lot of the stuff that goes on in the art world, but it's hard to be old and like what goes on around you.
• When I'm painting the picture, I'm really painting a picture. I may have a flat-footed technique, or something like that, but still, to me, the thrill, or the meat of the thing, is the actual painting. I don't get any thrill out of laying it out
• Abstract paintings must be as real as those created by the 16th century Italians
• I always get into arguments with people who want to retain the old values in painting - the humanistic values that they... find on the canvas. If you pin them down, they always end up asserting that there is something there besides the paint on the canvas. My painting is based on the fact that only what can be seen there is there... What you see is what you get.
• No art is any good unless you can feel how it's put together. By and large it's the eye, the hand and if it's any good, you feel the body. Most of the best stuff seems to be a complete gesture, the totality of the artist's body; you can really lean on it.
• Up until 35 I had a slightly skewed world view. I honestly believed everybody in the world wanted to make abstract paintings, and people only became lawyers and doctors and brokers and things because they couldn't make abstract paintings
• I was worried in the '80s that the best abstract painting had become obsessed with materiality, and painterly gestures and materiality were up against the wall.
• Remember that the '60s was up against the best American art that anyone had produced, and probably the best international art of the 20th century, minus Picasso and Matisse. But who was going to be as good as Barnett Newman and Clyfford Still? Maybe we weren't, but there was a lot of variety and a lot of trying
• What you see is what you see.
• I want to make exalted art. A successful image has pictorial lift. I am looking for whatever is up there
• A sculpture is just a painting cut out and stood up somewhere.
• Architecture can't fully represent the chaos and turmoil that are part of the human personality, but you need to put some of that turmoil into the architecture, or it isn't real.
• But, after all, the aim of art is to create space - space that is not compromised by decoration or illustration, space within which the subjects of painting can live.
• I don't like a lot of the stuff that goes on in the art world, but it's hard to be old and like what goes on around you.
• I don't like to say I have given my life to art. I prefer to say art has given me my life.
• I want to make exalted art. A successful image has pictorial lift. I am looking for whatever is up there.
• I was worried in the '80s that the best abstract painting had become obsessed with materiality, and painterly gestures and materiality were up against the wall.
• No art is any good unless you can feel how it's put together. By and large it's the eye, the hand and if it's any good, you feel the body. Most of the best stuff seems to be a complete gesture, the totality of the artist's body; you can really lean on it.
Frank Stella Career Highlights
1974 - "Wolfeboro" from Eccentric Polygons1999 - Can Hassan II
1980 - Polar Co-Ordinates for Ronnie Peterson, II
1989 - The Waves: Hyena
1986 - Stubb's Last Meal
1980 - Talladega
1977 - Sinjerli Variations III
1974 - Wolfeboro" from Eccentric Polygons
1977 - Sinjerli Variation IIA
1974 - Eccentric Polygons - Moultonville
1984 - Had Gadya #10
1982 - Shards III
1971 - River of Ponds IV
1974 - Eccentric Polygons - Moultonboro
2008 - K.137 (2nd version)
1985-1989 - The waves
2008 - K.93
1996 - Bilbemtesirol, from the Imaginary Places II series
2000 - Abu Hureya #11
1997 - Prince of Hohenfliess
1956-1957 - Pink and Black
1998 - Eusapia from "Imaginary Places III"
1972 - Multicolored Squares I: Gran Cairo
1977 - Sinjerli Variation la
2002 - kompek
1998-2002 - Die Kurfurstin (The Electoress) D#8B
2002 - Tepe Sujahbid
1985-1988 - The Waves: The Pacific (Plate 2)
1974 - Sunapee
1985-1989 - The Great Heidelberg Tun
1974 - Eccentric Polygons - Effingham
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Frank Stella ca.1830-1903
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