Frank Stella Unbound: Literature and Printmaking
Born in Malden, Massachusetts, Frank Stella attended Phillips Academy, Andover, and continued his studies at Princeton University, in Princeton, New Jersey, earning degree in history in 1958. A painter, printmaker, and sculptor, Stella is one of the most accomplished and prolific artists working today, celebrated for his constant self-reinvention and fearless drive to push the assumed limits of abstraction.
Frank Stella Unbound: Literature and Printmaking (May 19 – September 23, 2018) was organized to commemorate the 60th anniversary of Stella’s graduation from Princeton. It is the first exhibition to focus exclusively on the fundamental role that published narratives played on the artist’s graphic oeuvre. Frank Stella Unbound explores a widely innovative period of Stella’s printmaking career, between 1984 and 1999, when he executed four consecutive print series — Illustrations after El Lissitzky’s Had Gadya (1984), Italian Folktales (1988-89), The Moby Dick Prints (1989-93), and Imaginary Places (1994-99) — each of which was named after a distinct literary work.
While serving as the intern in the Director’s Office at the Princeton University Art Museum during the summer of 2018, I had the opportunity to interview the exhibition’s co-curators, Mitra Abbaspour, Haskell Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, and Calvin Brown, Associate Curator of Prints and Drawings. During our conversation on August 8, 2018, Mitra and Calvin discussed a number of important considerations in Stella’s work: the interplay of text and image, as it relates to Stella’s interdisciplinary approach and with regard to exhibition display and label copy; the artist’s working process and the incredible range of innovations he introduced to printmaking; the tension between pictorial and material surface texture; and, ultimately, the narrative potential of abstract forms.
Watch my full interview here:
Frank Stella Unbound: Literature and Printmaking is currently on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art Jacksonville (October 6, 2018 – January 13, 2019).