By Sky Malerba
Malden Arts Mondays is a two-month long celebration of artists and figures who have been born in Malden. Week Three of Malden Art’s Monday features renown artist Frank Stella.
A Malden native and New York resident, Frank Stella tricks and pleases the eye with his abstraction and minimalist work which stood out in the art scene of the ’50s and ’60s.
As an accomplished painter, sculptor and printmaker, Stella left his mark on pieces both in two-dimensional works and in three-dimensional space. His work includes the set and costumes for Scramble, a dance piece by Merce Cunningham in 1967, and a series of pieces called Protractor, which play with the intersection of geometric shapes and interplaying colors. In 1966, in a much quoted remark, he said, “What you see is what you see.”
Testing the boundaries of his understanding of shapes and mass, he delved more into sculpture starting with using canvases of irregular shapes, and then pasting free-standing metal pieces on them with paint. This experimentation would lead to increasingly more ambitious projects such as a series responding to the classic novel Moby Dick.
Stella also became a member of the Artists Rights Society, which granted him a sturdy platform to protest against a revoked penalty for infringement of a work if the creator cannot be contacted or located. His thoughts were documented in an Op-Ed for The Art Newspaper,
“…Few artists can afford the costs of federal litigation: attorneys’ fees in our country vastly exceed the licensing fee for a typical painting or drawing. The Copyright Office proposal would have a disproportionately negative, even catastrophic, impact on the ability of painters and illustrators to make a living from selling copies of their work… It is deeply troubling that government should be considering taking away their principal means of making ends meet—their copyrights.”
In 2018, the Malden Public Library acquired three Stella works and the artist returned to Malden for the unveiling ceremony in November.
Given that Stella focused on abstraction it makes sense that he would leave the interpretation of his art to the viewer without interference. Says Stella, “After all, the aim of art is to create space… space within which the subjects of painting can live.”
The goal of Malden Arts Mondays is to provide Malden residents (particularly families, young children and tweens/teens) with fun activities that help them get to know Malden’s cultural history and contributions, and bring out the creative in all of us. All activities can be done with safe, social distancing during this time of the coronavirus pandemic. For more information about the program, click here.
Previous Malden Arts Monday artists and figures are:
Thank you for this informative piece on the work of artist, Frank Stella. Malden can be proud to have such a favorite son.