Frank Stella: Quotes about ideas and thoughts

“I do think that a good pictorial idea is worth more than a lot of manual dexterity.”

Frank Stella

Quote from: Frank Stella, William S. Rubin, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1970, p. 30
Quotes, 1960 - 1970

Idea , Thinking

“The thing that struck me most was the way he stuck to the motif [in the 'Flag' and 'Target' paintings by Jasper Johns ]…. the idea of stripes – the rhythm and the interval – the idea of repetition. I began to think a lot about repetition.”

Frank Stella

quote, 1960's
Quotes, 1960 - 1970
Source: The New York school – the painters & sculptors of the fifties, Irving Sandler, Harper & Row, Publishers, 1978, pp. 215-216

Way , Quotes , Idea , Thinking

“The idea in being a painter is to declare an identity. Not just my identity, an identity for me, but an identity big enough for everyone to share in. Isn't that what it's all about?!”

Frank Stella

Quote, 1960's; as quoted in The New York school – the painters & sculptors of the fifties, Irving Sandler, Harper & Row, Publishers, 1978, p. 307
Quotes, 1960 - 1970

Idea

“I think I had been badly affected by.... the romance of Abstract Expressionism... particularly as it filtered out to places like Princeton and around the country, which was the idea of the 'artist as a terrifically sensitive ever-changing, ever ambitious person', particularly [described] in magazines like 'Art News' and 'Arts', which I read religiously.. I began to feel very strongly about finding a way that wasn't so wrapped up in the hullabaloo.... something that stable in a sense, something that wasn't constantly a record of your sensitivity, a record of flux.”

Frank Stella

reacting on a question about 'gesture' panting
Quote in: Frank Stella, William S. Rubin, Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1970, p. 13
Quotes, 1960 - 1970

Art , Way , Feeling , Idea

“But we're still left with structural or compositional elements. The problems aren't any different. I still have to compose a picture, and if you make an object [as Donald Judd does] you have to organize the structure. I don't think our work that radical in any sense because you don't find any really new compositional or structural element. I don't know if that exists. It's like the idea of the color you haven't seen before. Does something exist that's as radical as a diagonal that's not a diagonal? Or a straight line or a compositional element that you can't describe?”

Frank Stella

quote from Stella, reacting in the artist-talk on Donald Judd who emphasis the 'whole' of an art work
Source: Quotes, 1960 - 1970, Questions to Stella and Judd' - September 1966, p. 119

Color , Idea , Problem , Thinking

“They just want to get a handle on you and the idea, and that's enough. Some people sense more but they don't really get into it because it's going one step too far. But the whole idea of making art is to be open, to be generous, and absorb the viewer and absorb yourself, to let them go into it. I have to go into all those places in order to make it work.”

Frank Stella

Source: Quotes, 1971 - 2000, Bomb: X Motion Picture and Center for New Art Activities, 2000, p. 29.

People , Art , Idea , Sense

“When people still talk about art that I made in the 60's— most of them never saw it, and they never lived through it, and they don't have a clue about it. The idea that they know what minimalism is is absurd. I don't know what minimalism is!”

Frank Stella

Source: Quotes, 1971 - 2000, Bomb: X Motion Picture and Center for New Art Activities, 2000, p. 29.

People , Art , Idea

“Clement Greenberg talked about the ideas or possibilities of painting in his - I think -, 'After Abstract Expressionism' article, and he allows a blank canvas to be an idea for a painting. It might not be a good idea, but it's certainly valid. Yves Klein did the empty gallery. He sold 'air', and that was a conceptualized art, I guess.”

Frank Stella

Source: Quotes, 1960 - 1970, Questions to Stella and Judd' - September 1966, p. 122

Art , Idea , Thinking , Painting

“My painting is based on the fact that only what can be seen there is there. It really is an object. Any painting is an object and anyone who gets involved enough in this finally has to face up to the objectness of whatever it is that he's doing. He is making a thing.... all I want anyone to get out of my paintings, and all I ever get out of them, is the fact that you can see the whole idea without any confusion... What you see is what you see.”

Frank Stella

Quote from: 'Questions to Stella and Judd', Bruce Glaser, Art News, September 1966, p 58-59
Quotes, 1960 - 1970

Idea , Painting