Remembering Frank Stella (1936–2024)

These were prescient words: over the course of the next 60 years, the necessity and purpose of Stella’s works always remained painting, even as black gave way to color, lines to curves, and two dimensions to three. Stella’s vocabulary expanded in multitudinous directions, often in the case of a single artwork; his paintings eventually took form as monumental reliefs, free-standing sculptures, and even buildings. He was a ceaseless explorer—as proven by the two gallery shows of recent work now on view in New York—and did not worry about public response. After having been identified as a key voice of his generation (with, for example, two large solo shows at MoMA in 1970 and 1987), he was in his later years undeterred by far less unanimity concerning his commitment to an exuberantly baroque abstraction. Stella’s first loyalty was to his own roving mind, limitless energy, and strong work ethic, and for him the best projects were the almost absurdly ambitious ones.

Though not one to talk a lot, Stella was generous with his intelligence: casual answers presented in conversation could blow a listener’s mind and serve as instant art history lessons. One of my all-time favorites was his comment, early on, that he “tried to keep the paint as good as it was in the can.” At the beginning of his career, that meant giving the artist a fairly understated role to play in the art-making process. Later on, lavishly intensifying his romance with paint, there were infinitely many more cans, colors, and types of it, and the artist’s subjectivity rose to the fore. Either way, Stella never forgot the sheer goodness of his medium. Loving paint that much was enough to fuel a lifetime of work, and, in the meantime, to reconfigure our notion of what art can be.