Frank Stella

I sat and watched Painters Painting the other night: a documentary covering the New York School of painters from 1940 to 1970. I hadn’t watched it in like, three years or something. And as I watched it I remembered how much I loved the interview with Frank Stella describing how he came to paint his trademark minimalist abstract work.

Stella moved to New York in 1958, after graduating from Princeton, having seen the work of the abstract expressionists (most notably, Jackson Pollock and Franz Kline) which had a major influence on his artistic development.

After arriving in New York he reacted against the expressive use of paint, favouring the work of Barnett Newman and Jasper Johns, treating the painting as more of an object than a representational picture, be it objective or emotional. I always hear Clement Greenberg, “Paint is paint; surface is surface”.

Here’s an extended version of the interview used in Painters Painting...