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Lot Essay
Frank Stella’s Hiraqla III is a crowning example from his seminal Protractor series, begun in 1967, just prior to his first retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The product of Stella’s ambitious attempt to redefine abstract art after the stagnation of Abstract Expressionism, Stella here utilizes the ancient drafting tool—the protractor—to build his composition of interlocking semicircles which resolve into a rectilinear central base. The gargantuan expanse of the Protractor paintings, which consume any room they are placed within into an expansive, fluid spatial experience, was the first exploration of scale in Stella’s corpus, a style which he would continue to expand upon for the remainder of his career. Instantly recognizable, Stella’s Protractor works are among the most significant achievements of the twentieth century, radically altering the course of art history. As the curator and art historian Michael Auping notes, “The Protractor works are arguably the artist’s best-known and most popular paintings, nearly as famous as Warhol’s Marilyn or Campbell’s Soup Can paintings” (M. Auping, “Phenomenology of Frank: ‘Materiality and Gesture Make Space,’” in M. Auping, Frank Stella: A Retrospective, exh. cat., Whitney Museum of Modern Art, New York, 2015, p. 28).
Hiraqla III comes from one of the most accomplished of the thirty-one designs which Stella conceived for his Protractor series, all named for the ancient circular cities of Asia Minor or the four gates of ancient Baghdad. The Hiraqla works are among the most celebrated in the Protractor series, with the curator of Stella’s first retrospective, William S. Rubin, describing Hiraqla I as “among the most complex and beautifully realized” of the series (W. S. Rubin, Frank Stella, exh. cat., Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1970, p. 135). The present work was acquired the year it was painted by Victor and Sally Ganz, who assembled one of the most significant collections of the twentieth century while simultaneously championing Stella’s revolutionary art. The Kawamura Memorial DIC Museum of Art acquired Hiraqla III at their sale in 1988, achieving Stella’s then-record price in a twelve-work sale which also shattered records for Pablo Picasso, Robert Rauschenberg, and Eva Hesse. The work has remained thence in the museum’s collection as an exceptional example of Stella’s groundbreaking artistic achievement.
Hiraqla III is one of only three Protractor designs to feature two almost complete circular forms. Stella conceived of the series in three different designs, describing the first versions as “interlaces,” the second as “rainbows,” and the third as “fans.” As the third type, Hiraqla III features fan-shaped radial wedges in the central area between the two circular forms which come together into a central black star formation. After carefully drafting the composition on paper and constructing the shaped canvas, Stella commenced first with painting the edges of the semi-circles, realized in a mustard yellow, dark brown, and black in the present work. After filling in the edges, Stella then determined the remainder of his fluorescent palette, paying keen attention to the interactions of each color against the rest of the composition. Here, Stella’s pigments begin in bright, warm tones on the left of the work, then slowly transition into darker, more somber tones.
A further technical innovation demonstrated in Hiraqla III is Stella’s combination of architectonic and curvilinear forms within the same composition. The use of semi-circles as the dominant motif in his Protractor works was a seismic breakthrough for the artist, who previously exclusively used straight lines, except for in certain drawings made as part of his Irregular Polygon series. Robert Delaunay served as the most important influence for Stella in his transition from architectonic to curvilinear motifs. The artist noted how with his Protractors, “there are some overtones of Orphic Cubism that gets into the pictures as a result of the sheer geometry of the protractor, and while there’s no getting around that, I think that these relationships are visually incidental in that they do not essentially determine the character of the pictures” (F. Stella, quoted in W. S. Rubin, op. cit., p. 149). Stella’s intricate interweaving of rectilinear and circular motifs is, as Rubin describes, “anti-tectonic in a way hitherto unknown in Stella’s work. But they are also, paradoxically, the first that might be termed unremittingly architectural in both size and scale” (W. S. Rubin, ibid., p. 131).
The wall-conquering scale of Hiraqla III emerges from Stella’s deep interest in space: “the aim of art is to create space—space that is not compromised by decoration or illustration, space in which the subjects of painting can live. This is what painting has always been about. Sadly, however, the current prospects for abstraction seem terribly narrowed; its sense of space appears shallow and constricted” (F. Stella, Working Space, Cambridge, MA, 1986, p. 5). Stella found an alluring example to follow in the “space-composers” of the Italian Renaissance and Baroque, appropriating art historian Bernard Berenson’s famous term: “Space-composition is the art which humanizes the void, making of it an enclosed Eden, a domed mansion wherein our higher selves at last find an abode” (B. Berenson, quoted in F. Stella, ibid., p. 19). Stella identified Caravaggio specifically as the most accomplished composer of space, noting how “the space that Caravaggio created is something that twentieth-century painting could use,” especially in his ability to evoke the sensation of pictorial space while maintaining the miracle of surface, two achievements demonstrated in Hiraqla III (F. Stella, ibid., p. 11). As Auping aptly observes, “Stella installed these [Protractor] paintings in such a way that they almost filled the wall space of a room, evoking abstract frescoes that absorb and animate their surroundings” (M. Auping, op. cit., p. 28). Stella’s innovative combination of a rhythmic, mesmeric design and grand scale activates a space and captivates an audience in the same way as Caravaggio’s high Baroque church murals, such as The Conversion on the Way to Damascus in the Church of Santa Maria del Popolo’s Cerasi Chapel in Rome.
Another advancement achieved in the Protractor series was altering the very definition of modernist art. As Auping writes, “with the Protractors, Stella transgressed one of the most controversial boundaries of modernist art. He was willfully merging abstraction, the cutting edge of twentieth-century art, with the decorative, long thought to be the nemesis of the avant-garde” (M. Auping, ibid., p. 28). With Hiraqla III, Stella reverses the dominant trend in Western art since the dawn of the Renaissance, where, Stella writes, “by becoming more artists than craftsman, the Renaissance artist directed himself away from decoration and illustration... toward the creation of his own space” (F. Stella, op. cit., p. 5). Discussing his Protractor series in 1970, the artist elaborates: “my main interest has been to make what is popularly called decorative painting truly viable in unequivocal abstract terms. Decorative, that is, in a good sense, in the sense that it applied to Matisse. What I mean is that I would like to combine the abandon and indulgence of Matisse’s Dance with the over-all strength and sheer formal inspiration of a picture like his Moroccans... it seems to me that at their best, my recent paintings are so strongly involved with pictorial problems and pictorial concerns that they’re not conventionally decorative in any way” (F. Stella, quoted in W. S. Rubin, op. cit., p. 149).
A dazzling behemoth radically bridging abstraction with decoration, Hiraqla III dazzles with its bold, acid luminosity, transforming its space through its rhythmic, lateral flow of fluorescent and pastel colors channeled through kinetic radials and fans. “After Mondrian abstraction stands at peril,” Frank Stella warned—Hiraqla III is his poignant riposte, channeling the lessons of Caravaggio and Matisse to deliver a vision of abstraction which remains a breathtaking, sensual experience to this day.
Hiraqla III comes from one of the most accomplished of the thirty-one designs which Stella conceived for his Protractor series, all named for the ancient circular cities of Asia Minor or the four gates of ancient Baghdad. The Hiraqla works are among the most celebrated in the Protractor series, with the curator of Stella’s first retrospective, William S. Rubin, describing Hiraqla I as “among the most complex and beautifully realized” of the series (W. S. Rubin, Frank Stella, exh. cat., Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1970, p. 135). The present work was acquired the year it was painted by Victor and Sally Ganz, who assembled one of the most significant collections of the twentieth century while simultaneously championing Stella’s revolutionary art. The Kawamura Memorial DIC Museum of Art acquired Hiraqla III at their sale in 1988, achieving Stella’s then-record price in a twelve-work sale which also shattered records for Pablo Picasso, Robert Rauschenberg, and Eva Hesse. The work has remained thence in the museum’s collection as an exceptional example of Stella’s groundbreaking artistic achievement.
Hiraqla III is one of only three Protractor designs to feature two almost complete circular forms. Stella conceived of the series in three different designs, describing the first versions as “interlaces,” the second as “rainbows,” and the third as “fans.” As the third type, Hiraqla III features fan-shaped radial wedges in the central area between the two circular forms which come together into a central black star formation. After carefully drafting the composition on paper and constructing the shaped canvas, Stella commenced first with painting the edges of the semi-circles, realized in a mustard yellow, dark brown, and black in the present work. After filling in the edges, Stella then determined the remainder of his fluorescent palette, paying keen attention to the interactions of each color against the rest of the composition. Here, Stella’s pigments begin in bright, warm tones on the left of the work, then slowly transition into darker, more somber tones.
A further technical innovation demonstrated in Hiraqla III is Stella’s combination of architectonic and curvilinear forms within the same composition. The use of semi-circles as the dominant motif in his Protractor works was a seismic breakthrough for the artist, who previously exclusively used straight lines, except for in certain drawings made as part of his Irregular Polygon series. Robert Delaunay served as the most important influence for Stella in his transition from architectonic to curvilinear motifs. The artist noted how with his Protractors, “there are some overtones of Orphic Cubism that gets into the pictures as a result of the sheer geometry of the protractor, and while there’s no getting around that, I think that these relationships are visually incidental in that they do not essentially determine the character of the pictures” (F. Stella, quoted in W. S. Rubin, op. cit., p. 149). Stella’s intricate interweaving of rectilinear and circular motifs is, as Rubin describes, “anti-tectonic in a way hitherto unknown in Stella’s work. But they are also, paradoxically, the first that might be termed unremittingly architectural in both size and scale” (W. S. Rubin, ibid., p. 131).
The wall-conquering scale of Hiraqla III emerges from Stella’s deep interest in space: “the aim of art is to create space—space that is not compromised by decoration or illustration, space in which the subjects of painting can live. This is what painting has always been about. Sadly, however, the current prospects for abstraction seem terribly narrowed; its sense of space appears shallow and constricted” (F. Stella, Working Space, Cambridge, MA, 1986, p. 5). Stella found an alluring example to follow in the “space-composers” of the Italian Renaissance and Baroque, appropriating art historian Bernard Berenson’s famous term: “Space-composition is the art which humanizes the void, making of it an enclosed Eden, a domed mansion wherein our higher selves at last find an abode” (B. Berenson, quoted in F. Stella, ibid., p. 19). Stella identified Caravaggio specifically as the most accomplished composer of space, noting how “the space that Caravaggio created is something that twentieth-century painting could use,” especially in his ability to evoke the sensation of pictorial space while maintaining the miracle of surface, two achievements demonstrated in Hiraqla III (F. Stella, ibid., p. 11). As Auping aptly observes, “Stella installed these [Protractor] paintings in such a way that they almost filled the wall space of a room, evoking abstract frescoes that absorb and animate their surroundings” (M. Auping, op. cit., p. 28). Stella’s innovative combination of a rhythmic, mesmeric design and grand scale activates a space and captivates an audience in the same way as Caravaggio’s high Baroque church murals, such as The Conversion on the Way to Damascus in the Church of Santa Maria del Popolo’s Cerasi Chapel in Rome.
Another advancement achieved in the Protractor series was altering the very definition of modernist art. As Auping writes, “with the Protractors, Stella transgressed one of the most controversial boundaries of modernist art. He was willfully merging abstraction, the cutting edge of twentieth-century art, with the decorative, long thought to be the nemesis of the avant-garde” (M. Auping, ibid., p. 28). With Hiraqla III, Stella reverses the dominant trend in Western art since the dawn of the Renaissance, where, Stella writes, “by becoming more artists than craftsman, the Renaissance artist directed himself away from decoration and illustration... toward the creation of his own space” (F. Stella, op. cit., p. 5). Discussing his Protractor series in 1970, the artist elaborates: “my main interest has been to make what is popularly called decorative painting truly viable in unequivocal abstract terms. Decorative, that is, in a good sense, in the sense that it applied to Matisse. What I mean is that I would like to combine the abandon and indulgence of Matisse’s Dance with the over-all strength and sheer formal inspiration of a picture like his Moroccans... it seems to me that at their best, my recent paintings are so strongly involved with pictorial problems and pictorial concerns that they’re not conventionally decorative in any way” (F. Stella, quoted in W. S. Rubin, op. cit., p. 149).
A dazzling behemoth radically bridging abstraction with decoration, Hiraqla III dazzles with its bold, acid luminosity, transforming its space through its rhythmic, lateral flow of fluorescent and pastel colors channeled through kinetic radials and fans. “After Mondrian abstraction stands at peril,” Frank Stella warned—Hiraqla III is his poignant riposte, channeling the lessons of Caravaggio and Matisse to deliver a vision of abstraction which remains a breathtaking, sensual experience to this day.