Frank Stella
Painting - Harran II, 1967
In
the late 1960s, Frank Stella began his Protractor series, introducing an
expanded vocabulary of angles, curves, and rich fluorescent colors. Named after
ancient sites in Asia Minor, each of these paintings is defined by a
symmetrical base of squares and circles, intersected by what Stella calls
‘interlaces,’ ‘rainbows,’ and ‘fans.’ While these bands vary in brightness and
tone, their interwoven patterns compose a harmonious polyphony. There is no
depth in the compositions; instead, through a unique play of color and form,
the Protractor paintings exemplify the preeminence of flatness in Stella’s
abstract work.
Frank Stella broke the stronghold of Abstract Expressionism with his
deceptively simple paintings of black stripes separated by narrow lines of
unpainted canvas. With their emphasis on control and rationalism, the Black Paintings opened genuinely new paths
for abstraction and exerted a profound influence on the art of the 1960s. A
major shift from this work began to develop in 1966 with his Irregular Polygons, canvases in the shapes of
irregular geometric forms and characterized by large unbroken areas of color.
As this new vocabulary developed into a more open and color-oriented pictorial
language, the works underwent a metamorphosis in size, expressing an affinity
with architecture in their monumentality. Stella also introduced curves into
his works, marking the beginning of the Protractor series.
Harran II evinces the great vaulting compositions and lyrically decorative patterns that are the leitmotif of the series, which is based on the semicircular drafting instrument used for measuring and constructing angles. The effect that these colors have in the form of these interlaced curves― is like colored circles rolling through these static squares that are positioned all along with the painting.
It's an early reference by Stella to architectural form. One of the things Frank was trying to do with the protractor paintings was challenge architecture with painting. Make architecture actually seem smaller, or make painting seem equally muscular to the architecture that framed the paintings. What new thing we can do with landscape wetland is to create some innovative patterns including curvilinear forms while breaking the traditional natural shape with features like horizontal and vertical lines that intersect at right angles.
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