The Try-Works (Moby Dick Series)

From 1985 until 1997 Frank Stella created a series of artworks in response to Herman Melville’s classic American novel, Moby-Dick. He has called this series a “turning point” (F. Stella, quoted in P. Pobric, “Frank Stella: A Romantic, After All,” The Art Newspaper, Vol. 24, No. 273, November 2015), and it was at this stage in his career that Stella moved increasingly from the creation of paintings to that of large-scale reliefs. The Moby Dick pieces are named after the books’ chapters and “The Try-Works” (chapter 96) is a key moment in the text, and key to understanding Stella’s creation.

On a night when the ship’s furnace-like try-works (giant metal pots) are set ablaze to melt whale blubber, Moby-Dick’s narrator, Ishmael, identifies the hellish scene as a symbolic representation of the “monomaniac” captain Ahab and his compulsive quest for the whale. The present work, The Try- Works is by no means a literal representation of Melville’s words, but through its bold colors and curved, soaring forms, it visually recreates the physical and psychological drama of the sea odyssey and, like Ishmael, it extols anguished genius. Stella has remarked that the Moby Dick series conveys his regard for the Abstract Expressionists which influenced his early career, and the exuberant abstractions of The Try-Works are suitably celebratory. The esteemed dealer and collector, Ernst Beyeler, recognized the significance of The Try-Works, for the present work was a part of his collection for over two decades from soon after it was created until Beyeler’s death in 2010.