Lot Essay
Including: Clinton Plaza; Arundel Castle; Die Fahne Hoch!; Marriage of Reason and Squalor; Tomlinson Court Park; Getty Tomb; Arbeit Macht Frei; Club--Seven Steps; and Bethlehem's Hospital
'In his decision to represent the stripe paintings of the 1960s in the medium of lithography, Stella produced prints that were in a sense, predesigned. In the translation of painted to printed image, however Stella altered many of the original elements. He changed the striping pattern, for example. Or through a manipulation of the lithographic crayon, he unified surface finishes - a particularly significant factor in the Black Series I and Black Series II, where the modulations of surface in the paintings themselves vary. He also regularized the geometric configurations, which were less exacting in the paintings. 'I never did the math correctly. I never planned them really right.'' (R. Axsom, The Prints of Frank Stella: A Catalogue Raisonné, pp. 15)
'In his decision to represent the stripe paintings of the 1960s in the medium of lithography, Stella produced prints that were in a sense, predesigned. In the translation of painted to printed image, however Stella altered many of the original elements. He changed the striping pattern, for example. Or through a manipulation of the lithographic crayon, he unified surface finishes - a particularly significant factor in the Black Series I and Black Series II, where the modulations of surface in the paintings themselves vary. He also regularized the geometric configurations, which were less exacting in the paintings. 'I never did the math correctly. I never planned them really right.'' (R. Axsom, The Prints of Frank Stella: A Catalogue Raisonné, pp. 15)