Classroom use

Arts & Activities, Feb, 2004 by Guy Hubbard

THINGS TO LEARN

* Unlike many artists who discover a particular style and continue with it throughout their careers, Frank Stella refused to remain with one particular artistic style just because it was successful. He continually discovered new ways of expressing himself and was ready to take a risk and start again with new ideas. As a result he has gone through several periods where his work has changed very considerably. About the only thing that remains the same is that he has always been an abstract artist.

Not only has his style of working changed from time to time, he has also changed from being a painter to producing relief sculpture to being a printmaker and finally becoming a mural painter.

The work reproduced here is from a period when most of his work was relief sculpture.

* Stella's early work is very geometric and exact and was composed of straight lines and painted in black and white. Later, his paintings continued to be geometric but consisted of circular forms and were brightly colored. Another theme led to a series of works composed of shapes that were like cones and pillars. Later, his work became much more irregular and more spontaneous as though he had learned to be more confident about his artistic talent.

* From the very beginning Stella realized the need to live in the center of the art world, in New York City close to artists he thought were important. Partly as a result of being in New York he became friends with numbers of the better known young artists of the time, such as Warhol, Jasper Johns and Donald Judd. His early work was exhibited by art galleries where the owners supported him with money before he became well known.

Eventually Frank Stella became wealthy through the sales of his work.

* Although Frank Stella began as a painter and later went on to be a sculptor, early in his career he also developed a passionate interest in printmaking while living in Southern California. To begin with he printed from aluminum plates but later discovered that working on another metal, magnesium, gave him prints that were softer and better looking. He also experimented with printing inks that made unique colors and surfaces that were quite unlike ordinary printing inks.

* The artist's parents were determined that he should have a good education and sent him to good schools and universities. Both at school and university he was lucky to have excellent art teachers who introduced him to the work of living artists whose work was at the forefront of creativity.

He may also have received early encouragement in art at home because his mother had attended art school. While at first his father did not want him to become an artist, he was very pleased when his son became successful.

THINGS TO DO IN SCHOOL

* Students can only understand Frank Stella's work if they get to know the different styles he created throughout his career and also become familiar with the order in which they appeared. The best way of doing this is to study one of the books on his art that have been published and make themselves familiar with his work.

Probably the best way of ensuring that students actually learn about his art--rather than simply flip ping through the pages of a book--is to ask them either to write about his art or to talk about it to other students. In both kinds of testing experience, students Should be encouraged to show reproductions of the artist's work.

* A good test of student knowledge would be for a random mixture of reproductions of Stella's work to be placed on a table and for students to be asked to organize the examples into groups produced at the same time in his life and perhaps place them in piles from earliest to latest.

* Although Frank Stella worked with exotic materials, in some ways they are quite similar to those that students can use in an art class. For example, instead of cutting shapes from sheet aluminum or magnesium and welding them together, students may use cardboard and glue with quite similar results. And instead of oil or epoxy paints, students may use tempera paints to decorate surfaces--or even crayon.

In these ways, students can get close to the creative experience Stella had when making Kastura and similar works.

* Were students to be interested in making their own constructions modeled after Kastura, they should first learn about the kinds of geometric shapes that architectural draftsmen use in their work. In this work, for example, a protractor-like shape can be seen as well as some modifications of familiar French curve templates. Students may also like to draw and paint images of Indian arabesque shapes and use them in their own art using both traditional Indian color schemes and the more exciting colors preferred by Frank Stella.

Or, like Stella, they might be interested in inventing their own modifications of these kinds of shapes for use in their work. Two of them present in Kastura are comma and boomerang shapes.

BUILDING A PICTURE FILE

This sculpture may be used to illustrate various art-teaching needs. Potentially useful picture-file categories include: "Mixed Media"; "Relief Sculpture"; "Abstract Art"; "Sculpture: Maquettes"; and "American Artists: Frank Stella."