.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
“I would consider that the best of the metal reliefs of recent years are superior even to the finest paintings of the early sixties”—William Rubin, Director of the Painting and Sculpture Department, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1987.
Standing over ten feet tall, Frank Stella’s First Night-Watch (B-4, 2X) is a large example from the artist’s iconic Moby Dick series. Having established himself firmly in the art historical canon in the 1960s with his revolutionary Black Paintings, throughout his career Stella sought to constantly push at the accepted norms of artistic production. In this work, the energetic arrangement of brightly colored metallic planes dissolves the traditional divide between sculpture and painting, resulting in a relief that is unashamedly three-dimensional. Their surface bears witness to Stella’s actions as a painter, hosting a dazzling array of colorful daubs, drips and tantalizing brushwork. Executed in 1988, Stella produced two examples of this particular work, the present large example, and a smaller version which is currently in the permanent collection of The Broad museum in Los Angeles.
The artist’s arrangement of colorful metal forms is carefully pieced together create a work of stunning complexity. Although seemingly abstract, these shapes do evoke figurative forms; here the pulsating waves of red and yellow that radiate out from the upper right corner of the work evoke a distinct sense of movement. The work is named for a chapter in the book in which Stubb, the second mate of the Pequod, is mending a brace on the top of the sail as the boat rolls on the swelling sea, the sense of movement is reflected in the relief’s highly active surface. The precise layering of these chromatic planes creates spaces and voids deep within the body of the sculpture, visible through the openings and crevices that make up much of the body of the work. These are not forgotten areas however, there are an essential part of the overall configuration, as intricately worked as the outer surfaces yet offering an intriguing insight into Stella’s compositional strategies. Looking deep into the interior reveals surfaces covered with geometric patterns that recall Stella’s work from two decades earlier.
First published in 1851, Moby Dick is widely considered to be among the finest works of American literature. It tells the story of mad Captain Ahab’s journey to track the epic whale he encountered on a previous journey. Stella originally read Moby-Dick as a youngster, about the time he also saw the film version directed by John Houston. Initially he was not impressed, and it would not be until 30 years later when he took his too young sons to see the Beluga whales at the New York Aquarium in 1985 that it stirred his imagination. “The first thing we saw every time we went into the aquarium were the Beluga whales in the tank just as you came right in the door,” he said. “They were just sort of looming over you, as it were. I just kept seeing them for about two years, and then one day the wave forms and the whales started to come together as an idea” (F. Stella, quoted by R. K. Wallace, ibid., p. 7). Thus, began one of the artist’s most ambitious series of work. Over the next 12 years Stella produced 167 compositions in total, each named after chapters in Melville’s book. Whilst not seeking to be a direct interpretation of Moby-Dick, Stella was more interested in the hybrid structure of the novel. Such is the importance of this series within the artist’s oeuvre, other examples are included in many important museum collections including New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art (The Whiteness of the Whale, 1987), San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, (The Chase. Third Day, 1989), and the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (The Lamp, 1986).
Parallels have been drawn between Stella’s career and that of Picasso, an artist once described as being “…more completely himself in three dimensions; a magician, a magpie genius, a comedic entertainer and a tinkerer with superb reflexes. His many gifts—versatility, voraciousness, a need for constant reinvention—are more sharply apparent in real space and tangibles (R. Smith, “Picasso Sculpture,” New York Times, Friday, September 11, 2015). Like Picasso, critics have celebrated Stella’s sculptural work as the natural progression of his early prodigious career. Indeed, William Rubin, the influential curator of painting and sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art in New York was so taken by a visit to Stella’s studio in 1987 that he enthused: “Standing amid the dozens of paper models that represent the second group of new paintings…during a recent visit to Stella’s studio,” he enthused, “I could not but be overwhelmed by the sheer profusion of his ideas, and the immense outpouring of energy on which they ride… I would consider that the best of the metal reliefs of recent years are superior even to the finest paintings of the early sixties. And with the prospect of decades of development lying ahead, one can imagine that there is still greater and more unexpected work to come” (W. Rubin, Frank Stella 1970-1987, exh. cat., Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1987, p. 149).
Standing over ten feet tall, Frank Stella’s First Night-Watch (B-4, 2X) is a large example from the artist’s iconic Moby Dick series. Having established himself firmly in the art historical canon in the 1960s with his revolutionary Black Paintings, throughout his career Stella sought to constantly push at the accepted norms of artistic production. In this work, the energetic arrangement of brightly colored metallic planes dissolves the traditional divide between sculpture and painting, resulting in a relief that is unashamedly three-dimensional. Their surface bears witness to Stella’s actions as a painter, hosting a dazzling array of colorful daubs, drips and tantalizing brushwork. Executed in 1988, Stella produced two examples of this particular work, the present large example, and a smaller version which is currently in the permanent collection of The Broad museum in Los Angeles.
The artist’s arrangement of colorful metal forms is carefully pieced together create a work of stunning complexity. Although seemingly abstract, these shapes do evoke figurative forms; here the pulsating waves of red and yellow that radiate out from the upper right corner of the work evoke a distinct sense of movement. The work is named for a chapter in the book in which Stubb, the second mate of the Pequod, is mending a brace on the top of the sail as the boat rolls on the swelling sea, the sense of movement is reflected in the relief’s highly active surface. The precise layering of these chromatic planes creates spaces and voids deep within the body of the sculpture, visible through the openings and crevices that make up much of the body of the work. These are not forgotten areas however, there are an essential part of the overall configuration, as intricately worked as the outer surfaces yet offering an intriguing insight into Stella’s compositional strategies. Looking deep into the interior reveals surfaces covered with geometric patterns that recall Stella’s work from two decades earlier.
First published in 1851, Moby Dick is widely considered to be among the finest works of American literature. It tells the story of mad Captain Ahab’s journey to track the epic whale he encountered on a previous journey. Stella originally read Moby-Dick as a youngster, about the time he also saw the film version directed by John Houston. Initially he was not impressed, and it would not be until 30 years later when he took his too young sons to see the Beluga whales at the New York Aquarium in 1985 that it stirred his imagination. “The first thing we saw every time we went into the aquarium were the Beluga whales in the tank just as you came right in the door,” he said. “They were just sort of looming over you, as it were. I just kept seeing them for about two years, and then one day the wave forms and the whales started to come together as an idea” (F. Stella, quoted by R. K. Wallace, ibid., p. 7). Thus, began one of the artist’s most ambitious series of work. Over the next 12 years Stella produced 167 compositions in total, each named after chapters in Melville’s book. Whilst not seeking to be a direct interpretation of Moby-Dick, Stella was more interested in the hybrid structure of the novel. Such is the importance of this series within the artist’s oeuvre, other examples are included in many important museum collections including New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art (The Whiteness of the Whale, 1987), San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, (The Chase. Third Day, 1989), and the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (The Lamp, 1986).
Parallels have been drawn between Stella’s career and that of Picasso, an artist once described as being “…more completely himself in three dimensions; a magician, a magpie genius, a comedic entertainer and a tinkerer with superb reflexes. His many gifts—versatility, voraciousness, a need for constant reinvention—are more sharply apparent in real space and tangibles (R. Smith, “Picasso Sculpture,” New York Times, Friday, September 11, 2015). Like Picasso, critics have celebrated Stella’s sculptural work as the natural progression of his early prodigious career. Indeed, William Rubin, the influential curator of painting and sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art in New York was so taken by a visit to Stella’s studio in 1987 that he enthused: “Standing amid the dozens of paper models that represent the second group of new paintings…during a recent visit to Stella’s studio,” he enthused, “I could not but be overwhelmed by the sheer profusion of his ideas, and the immense outpouring of energy on which they ride… I would consider that the best of the metal reliefs of recent years are superior even to the finest paintings of the early sixties. And with the prospect of decades of development lying ahead, one can imagine that there is still greater and more unexpected work to come” (W. Rubin, Frank Stella 1970-1987, exh. cat., Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1987, p. 149).