Frank Stella - Hard Lines

"uhh"

it's nice to actually hear an artist talk, and not a magazine, or someone from the year 2009.

i love the free floating shapes

by the end i was feeling a little sick though

bobbyflayometer : "8/10"

-jeremy

*rachel says*

Stella makes his thesis statement as a response to abstract expressionism.
"we (our paintings) got to be more of an illustration of energy than an establishment of real pictorial energy"

I appreciate that he has chosen the word energy in place of "emotion", allowing artmaking to return to a more primitive and essential form of *human* expression. He wants the spirit of his work lives outside the contrived affected world, which i fucking appreciate. That being said, yes jeremy, the bobbyflayometer is a little high in some of these. His ideas about image accessibility are interesting but fail-safe.

for the sake of argument and in defense of abstract expressionism, De Kooning's Excavation is hardly piddling in the corners.



-jeremy says:

"that quote about the corners has become a sort of oft-referenced thing. i've heard it before. it's funny.

i am continuously not liking de kooning.

my favorite part about the interview is the idea of being inaccessible and forcing the viewer out. i had the very same notion during many critiques. taking my self-defeating attitude into consideration i would not necessarily chalk that idea here up to bobby flay and being fail safe. in fact, because of that the score was reduced two points.

my least favorite part is how stella embraces the sort of rivalry between action painting and whatever sort this is here. they exist in the same realm, not even at the ends of the same spectrum, each can contain both ideas. it's like scientists from different fields not getting along or something. it's stupid.

did stella do those black paintings? a quick check of google says yes.



they remind me of dune by david lynch. there is something to these."