REACTOR

An Open Letter to Frank Stella onthe Occasion of His WhitneyRetrospectiveby Joseph Nechvatal on November 16, 2015

http://hyperallergic.com/253681/an-open-letter-to-frank-stella-on-the-occasion-of-his-whitney-retrospective/

Frank Stella, “Marrakech” (1964), fluorescent alkyd on canvas, 77 x 77 x2 7/8 innches, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; gift of Mr. andMrs. Robert C. Scull, 1971 (© 2015 Frank Stella/Artists Rights Society[ARS], New York)

Dear Frank Stella,

Your object-paintings choke me. Besides your great black andsilver works, the Whitney Museum’s walls and walls of painting-as-relief-sculpture are hammy and smothering. Worse, their literalheaps of jutting materiality block me from engaging with effectiveimagination or speculative participation. There is nothing to beimaginatively negotiated with here. Only protruding stuff (thatsmacks of synthetic cubist collage) to be physically avoided.The gaudy, hackneyed formalism of your work does not providemany hopeful occasions for thinking through the complex issuesaround the state of contemporary painting. It has taken apredetermined position in support of a narrative of art based on thefalse choice between figurative and abstract form, choosingexclusively the latter.

Frank Stella, “Die Fahne hoch!” (1959), enamel on canvas, 121 5/8 x 7213/16 inches, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; gift of Mr. andMrs. Eugene M. Schwartz and purchase with funds from the John I. H.Baur Purchase Fund, the Charles and Anita Blatt Fund, Peter M. Brant, B.H. Friedman, the Gilman Foundation, Inc., Susan Morse Hilles, TheLauder Foundation, Frances and Sydney Lewis, the Albert A. List Fund,Philip Morris Incorporated, Sandra Payson, Mr. and Mrs. AlbrechtSaalfield, Mrs. Percy Uris, Warner Communications Inc., and the NationalEndowment for the Arts (© 2015 Frank Stella/Artists Rights Society[ARS], New York; digital Image © Whitney Museum)

I know, I know, you have prided yourself on being an objectpainter. But your dreary diagrams (that follow way too closely thepainted patterns of the Groupe de Recherche d’Art Visuel) areuninteresting as a form of effective art. Your paint-within-the-linescorporate formalism ceased to make the slightest sense in thiscomplex, fuzzy, info-world a long time ago. How can you, thecreator of the elegant Black Paintings “Die Fahne hoch!,”“Arundel Castle,” “The Marriage of Reason and Squalor II,” and“Jill” (all 1959), also have been satisfied with making the garish“Marrakech” (1964)? As I walked through your retrospective, Ibecame increasingly bored by the cleverly cut padding that tiltsyour output in the direction of bombastic spectacle, such as“Zeltweg (V), 4.75X” (1982).

So yes Frank, by all means, chuck swirling stuff into my eyes ifyou want to, but you will probably get better as an artist if you

think hard about how you handle authorial aggression. All art hasto do to be interesting is to offer the sensitive record of oneperson’s frail consciousness, one person’s interpretation of publicevents that involve others — like cyber invasions of privacy, likethe melting fury of escaping war; morality and ethics, in short. Inoticed that your abstract forms do not involve the pains anddreams of others. They only have going for them that worn outavant-garde commitment to the idea that a visual shock — in yourcase, one that pokes me in the eye — produces a more sensitive,perceptive, insightful, and enlivened person. It does not. It jadesand blinds.

Frank Stella, “Das Erdbeben in Chili [N#3]” (1999), acrylic on canvas,144 x 486 inches, private collection (photo by Hyperallergic) (click toenlarge)

I apologize for using this comparison Frank, but your big bravoworks like “At Sainte Luce!’ [Hoango] [Q#1]” (1998) and the 144-by-486-inch “Das Erdbeben in Chili [N#3]” (1999), with theirswerves and clashing color paradoxes, have a Donald Trump-likeair of faux-hair transgression about them. There’s a 1%-trumpetinggrand hoopla to these works (increased by their corporate lobbyproportions) that is Trumpish and anti-Occupy arrogant.

Personally, if bluffing, high-macho bombast is your thing, I’drather look at Hermann Nitsch’s bloody smears.

So Frank, sorry, but your rather brutal, jaded, bizarre geometricobject paintings fail to reach the depth of my visual imagination.They are missing something important and profound, a subjectivefeeling of melty-filminess suggestive of biological and sexualcuriosity. And that is everything.

SincerelyJoseph Nechvatal

Frank Stella: A Retrospective continues at the Whitney Museum ofAmerican Art (99 Gansevoort Street, Meatpacking District,

Manhattan) through February 7, 2016.