COLLECTION NAME:
The AMICA Library
Record
AMICA ID:
CMA_.2001.126
AMICA Library Year:
2003
Object Type:
Sculpture
Creator Name:
Stella, Frank
Creator Name:
Stella, Frank
Creator Nationality:
American
Creator Role:
Artist
Creator Dates/Places:
1936
Biography:
Frank Stella was born in Malden, Massachusetts in 1936 and studied at Princeton University. Stella's auspicious start in New York, only a year after his graduation from Princeton, was an exhibit of the Black Paintings of 1959-60. Viewed as a precursor to Minimalism, these pivotal works led to his inclusion in Sixteen Americans at the Museum of Modern Art and the notice of its director, Alfred Barr, who purchased a painting, The Marriage of Squalor and Reason. With their emphasis on control and rationalism, the Black Paintings opened genuinely new paths for abstraction and exerted a profound influence on the art of the 1960s.A major shift from this work began to develop in 1966 with his Irregular Polygons, canvases in the shapes of irregular geometric forms and characterized by large unbroken areas of color. As this new vocabulary developed into a more open and color-oriented pictorial language, the works underwent a metamorphosis in size, expressing an affinity with architecture in their monumentality. Stella also introduced curves into his works, marking the beginning of the Protractor series. Harran II evinces the great vaulting compositions and lyrically decorative patterns that are the leitmotif of the series, which is based on the semicircular drafting instrument used for measuring and constructing angles.In the 1970s, Stella's work moved toward three-dimensional paintings on shaped canvases and later toward wall constructions with multiple components, ever projecting further from their supports. Stella's second retrospective at MOMA in 1987 concluded with a series of daring reliefs based on Melville's Moby Dick. These works further blurred any boundary between paintings and sculpture. In 1983-84 Stella gave the Charles Eliot Norton lectures at Harvard University. These lectures, later published under the title Working Space, marked a critical juncture for the artist. A spirited defense of abstraction, they could well sum up Stella's approach to painting and have acted as a manifesto for his work since.Since the 1980s, the artist has completed a number of large-scale works for public spaces, confirming Stella's abiding interest in architecture. A vast commission during the early 90s, involving the Princess of Wales Theater in Toronto, has led to a series of architectural proposals and commissions over the past eight years, including his Bandshell for the City of Miami.
Gender:
M
Creator Birth Place:
Malden, MA
Creator Name-CRT:
Frank Stella
Title:
Çatal Hüyük (level VI B) Shrine VI B.1
Title Type:
Primary
View:
Detail
Creation Date:
2001
Creation Start Date:
2001
Creation End Date:
2001
Materials and Techniques:
aluminum pipe and cast aluminum
Classification Term:
Sculpture
Style or Period:
America, 21st Century
Dimensions:
Overall: 246.3cm x 322.4cm x 231cm
AMICA Contributor:
The Cleveland Museum of Art
Owner Location:
Cleveland, Ohio, USA
ID Number:
2001.126
Credit Line:
Gift of Agnes Gund and Daniel Shapiro and John L. Severance Fund
Context:
Çatal Hüyük derives its title from the religious shrines uncovered at the excavation site of the neolithic town of Çatal Hüyük (around 6000 BC) in modern-day Turkey. The paintings on plaster discovered in these shrines are considered to be the earliest on man-made surfaces. Indeed, Stella's abstract sculpture evokes the animal and hunting scenes found there. Constructed of cast, welded, and bolted aluminum, it also evokes modern industrial imagery.Although it explodes with energy, Çatal Hüyük contains that power within a unified composition. The swirling aluminum pipe at its core recalls the Golden Spiral, a unit of measure in nature and mathematics that visually resembles the cross section of a snail's shell.Since the late 1950s, Frank Stella has renewed and challenged the contemporary art world by investigating opposites-flatness and depth, simplicity and complexity, painting and sculpture-in his art. In the 1970s and 1980s, he introduced three-dimensional paintings on shaped canvases and then wall constructions on painted metal (see Stella's colorful Giufa e la Statua di Gesso on view in Gallery 239). This work represents the latest stage in his explorations-huge, multi-part compositions that hang on the wall but project ever further into the viewer's space.
Related Image Identifier Link:
CMA_.2001.126det01.tif
Initial Sort:
Stella, Frank
Çatal Hüyük (level VI B) Shrine VI B.1
