{"id":3459,"date":"2018-12-05T00:00:09","date_gmt":"2018-12-05T05:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sequitur\/?p=3459"},"modified":"2018-12-04T17:18:18","modified_gmt":"2018-12-04T22:18:18","slug":"ruoppo-interview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/sequitur\/2018\/12\/05\/ruoppo-interview\/","title":{"rendered":"Frank Stella Unbound: Literature and Printmaking"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Figure 1. Installation view of Frank Stella Unbound: Literature and Printmaking, Princeton University Art Museums. Courtesy of the Princeton University Art Museum.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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.<\/span><\/p>\n

Frank Stella Unbound: Literature and Printmaking <\/span><\/i>(May 19 \u2013 September 23, 2018) was organized to commemorate the 60<\/span>th<\/span> anniversary of Stella\u2019s graduation from Princeton. It is the first exhibition to focus exclusively on the fundamental role that published narratives played on the artist\u2019s graphic oeuvre. <\/span>Frank Stella Unbound<\/span><\/i> explores a widely innovative period of Stella\u2019s printmaking career, between 1984 and 1999, when he executed four consecutive print series \u2014 <\/span>Illustrations after El Lissitzky\u2019s Had Gadya<\/span><\/i> (1984), <\/span>Italian Folktales<\/span><\/i> (1988-89), <\/span>The Moby Dick Prints<\/span><\/i> (1989-93), and <\/span>Imaginary Places<\/span><\/i> (1994-99) \u2014 each of which was named after a distinct literary work.<\/span><\/p>\n

While serving as the intern in the Director\u2019s Office at the Princeton University Art Museum during the \u00a0summer of 2018, I had the opportunity to interview the exhibition\u2019s 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\u2019s work: the interplay of text and image, as it relates to Stella\u2019s interdisciplinary approach and with regard to exhibition display and label copy; the artist\u2019s 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.<\/span><\/p>\n

Watch my full interview here:<\/p>\n