Frank Stella

Mr. and Mrs. Leo Castelli, New York (LC# 104)
Gagosian Gallery, New York
Acquired by the present owner from the above in 1988

Lawrence Rubin, Frank Stella Paintings 1968 - 1965, a Catalogue Raisonné, New York, 1986, cat. no. 92, illustrated

This painting is in excellent condition. For further information, a condition report has been prepared by Terrence Mahon, Painting Conservator, New York City. Please contact the Contemporary Art department at 212-606-7254 to receive this report. The canvas is unframed.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

"The copper pictures were a big jump, and I was aware that they raised questions about relief and sculpture. But I knew where I stood, and wasn't afraid of the problem...although these are the most radically shaped of the canvases they are also the most rectilinear in a way...they represent the extreme—the limit—to which I could take the shaping. Even though so much is cut away—and in some cases so arbitrarily—what saves them, I think, is the fact that they keep echoing a kind of rectilinearity."

-Frank Stella, as quoted in Exh. Cat., New York, Museum of Modern Art, Frank Stella, 1970, p. 68

Ouray is an exquisite paradigm of minimal aesthetics. Painted soon after Stella's inclusion in the now legendary 'Sixteen Americans' exhibition held at the Museum of Modern Art in 1959-1960, it belongs to a series of aluminum and metallic copper paint works executed on shaped canvases of highly polished and reflective surfaces. Like his ground-breaking Black paintings of 1958-1959, the ostensible simplicity of the copper series perplexed critics who saw in them an unapproachable reductionism. Notwithstanding the initial hesitant reactions, Stella enjoyed the support of important art historians and curators at this early stage in his career. His inclusion in the MoMA show at the tender age of twenty-two is a testament to the immediate recognition of his talent. According to Leo Castelli, Dorothy Miller was at once enthralled upon seeing Stella's work in August of 1959. "I must have these paintings in my show," said Miller, then curator of the Museum of Modern Art, and who like Castelli recognized Stella's work as pioneering. "I don't know why," Castelli noted decades later, "but probably I understood him so well right away." (Sidney Guberman, Frank Stella, an Illustrated Biography, New York, 1995, p. 43)

Stella's use of copper paint originated in practicality as he first encountered the medium as a barnacle-resistant material to cover the bottom of his father's boat. The matter-of-factness of each one of the 16 copper paintings is further emphasized by their geographical titles, all of them referencing towns in the San Juan Mountains in Colorado: Ophir, Telluride, Ouray, Pagosa Springs, Lake City, and Creede. From these six titles which correspond to a particular shape of canvas, Stella painted 16 works. Like most titles in the series, Ouray exists as two large versions and the present smaller version. This more intimate scale was executed at the suggestion of Castelli and Ivan Karp who encouraged Stella to replicate the original copper paintings in a more 'portable' format. (Ibid, 72)   

Ouray's Greek cross, like the other works in the series, is an extraction from patterns in the Black paintings. Unlike the latter, however, the copper paintings have been described as being "far more striking." (Ibid) They also operate fundamentally as open pictures, defined not by their monumentality, but by their thrust and dynamism. Particularly in Ouray, the four distinct outward pathways denote the cardinal points, a shape which further reinforces the expansiveness of the picture field. Yet Stella's rectilinear brushstrokes belie the sensibility of their irregularities. Thinly painted, each copper stripe reveals a marvelous understanding of the fragility of paint. As one moves closer into the picture, the appearance of exact linearity gives way to depth and brilliance in technique. Separating the copper stripes are the pauses, the spaces of 'nothingness' and painterly avoidance, where the so called flatness of the picture plane is both irredeemably challenged and beautifully disintegrated.

The perception of flatness is expertly achieved in Ouray's systematic facture. In spite of the explicit regularity displayed in this painting, it is not believed that Stella arrived at its dimensions using a conventional inches-to-feet ratio. Surprisingly, the configuration of these seemingly 'rigorous' copper paintings appears to have been liberally conceived, allowing instead for the outermost border to dictate the internal separation of the stripes. The working method on the copper series is supported by sketches reproduced in Christian Geelhaar's catalog where an asterisk further indicates that Ouray was 'yet to be finished.' (Frank Stella's Working Drawings 1956-1970 (Zeichnungen), trans. by Cirus Hamlin, Basel, The Kunstmuseum, 1980)  

Stella's personal involvement with the flatness of the picture plane deserves particular attention. Flatness, according to Stella's lectures at the Pratt Institute in January 1960, is achieved through symmetry and the use of the monochrome, a solution which forces illusionistic space out of the painting at constant intervals by using a regulated pattern. Stella would later contend otherwise; years later championing for the re-introduction of illusionistic volumes into the spatial language of non-objective painting. His evolution in aesthetic theory regarding the essential qualities of the picture plane is already visible in multi-color Concentric Square pictures such as Jasper's Dilemma painted shortly after.