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Lot Essay
Stella's work in one medium inevitably influences his work in another, as he remains committed to pursuing groundbreaking ways to paint, or construct, abstract pictures. Vemish represents one of Stella's most recent progressions, a return to paintings, which, in Stella's vernacular, demand a re-definition of the medium. Of these recent works, Judith Goldman has written:
"In a surprising move, [Stella] has returned to the flat canvas. In an even more surprising move, he introduces a visual language made up of printed images. A language of photomechanical reproduction, of graphic signs and systems, it consists of halftone dots and pixelated dots, of old fashioned engraved lines and new fangled computer generated images. But Stella does not simply borrow the syntax of mechanical reproduction as Roy Lichtenstein does. Stella's halftone dots have been altered--enlarged by cameras, manipulated by computers and painted in the colors of print. Stella has invented a new language; worldly, frenetic, and vulgar, it has no relation to high art. It is an entirely abstract language, which seems only appropriate, for it is a language made by Stella in order to create authentic and expansive pictorial space" (J. Goldman, "Frank Stella, Making it Better," Frank Stella, ex. cat. Haus der Kunst München, February-April 1996, p. 264).
"In a surprising move, [Stella] has returned to the flat canvas. In an even more surprising move, he introduces a visual language made up of printed images. A language of photomechanical reproduction, of graphic signs and systems, it consists of halftone dots and pixelated dots, of old fashioned engraved lines and new fangled computer generated images. But Stella does not simply borrow the syntax of mechanical reproduction as Roy Lichtenstein does. Stella's halftone dots have been altered--enlarged by cameras, manipulated by computers and painted in the colors of print. Stella has invented a new language; worldly, frenetic, and vulgar, it has no relation to high art. It is an entirely abstract language, which seems only appropriate, for it is a language made by Stella in order to create authentic and expansive pictorial space" (J. Goldman, "Frank Stella, Making it Better," Frank Stella, ex. cat. Haus der Kunst München, February-April 1996, p. 264).