Frank Stella, the Indian bird maquettes :Frank Stella, the Indian bird maquettes :[exhibition] the Museum of Modern Art,[exhibition] the Museum of Modern Art,New York, March 12-May 1, 1979New York, March 12-May 1, 1979

Author

Stella, Frank

Date

1979

Publisher

The Museum of Modern Art

Exhibition URL

www.moma.org/calendar/exhibitions/2307

The Museum of Modern Art's exhibition history—

from our founding in 1929 to the present—is

available online. It includes exhibition catalogues,

primary documents, installation views, and an

index of participating artists.

© 2017 The Museum of Modern ArtMoMA

Frank Stella: The Museum of Modern Art, New YorkThe Indian Bird Maquettes March 12-May 1,1979

111

The maquettes for the brilliantIndian Bird series were executed inOctober 1977, while the artist was aguest of the Sarabhai family at theirresidence in Ahmedabad, India. (Aduplicate set of these maquetteswas given by the artist to theSarabhai Foundation.) Stellaremembers the twelve days of hisstay in Ahmedabad as "wonderfully

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The Museum of Modern Art Library

Front cover: Maquette for #3, Ramgangra, 21 x 16% ". All maquettesexecuted October 1977; imprintedmetal alloy sheets, wire mesh, andsoldered and welded metal scraps,with paint and oil crayon. All works,collection of the artist

Opposite page, top: The artist withAnand Sarabhai

productive." The Sarabhais weregenerous in furnishing assistants —starting with four, the crew becametwenty-four (including part-timers) —and the artist retains fond memoriesof the shared excitement of thiscollective participation.

Stella had just begun to elaborate his ideas for this series whenhe departed for India. He carried

with him a few drawings and amodel — in paper and foamboard —for what eventually became thesecond in the series to be completed. Each model was firstdeveloped in its actual size as aseries of superimposed drawingsexecuted on transparent paper.(Compare the drawings on the backcover with the color reproduction of

Maquette for #1, Jungli kowwa , 161/s x 191/4"

the same work on the front cover.)Stella's assistants then traced theforms and cut them out of scrapmetal sheets. Most of the latter weretin-alloy sheets, silk-screened withmisregistered and multiple over-printings of the names and logosof various soft-drink and food-processing companies.

The characteristic shapes — like

those of the preceding Exotic Birdseries — are all Irregular Curves,taken from instruments used bymarine and architectural draftsmen.The majority of forms in the IndianBirds are Danish Ship Curves, butthere are also Railroad Curves, usedto plot the patterns on which railbedding turns. The overall structureof the reliefs is tripartite: The "field"

Maquette for #2, Maha-lat, 151/2 x 20"

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or background against which theIrregular Curves function — thestructure that quite literally holdsthe reliefs together — is a half-cylinder of metal grillwork. The twoforward edges of the grill support aflat pattern of shapes posed at rightangles to the spectator's line ofvision (back cover, fig. A), whichestablish a picture plane, and thus

Maquette for #4, Sat-bhai, 20 x 155/s"

maintain the pictorial character ofthe conception; it is formed ofirregular curves in the smaller of twoscales. Penetrating this "pictureplane" at different angles, moving infront of and behind it, are a set ofcurves in a scale three times larger(back cover, fig. B) that constitutethe third component. Odd bits ofadditional scrap such as wire, metal

mesh, screening, and metal rods arealso worked into the relief models.

There are virtually no straightlines in the Indian Birds — a trait thatwould seem to set them morphologically in polar opposition to theBlack, Aluminum, and Copperpictures with which Stella's careerbegan. But for all their arabesques,the Irregular Curves nevertheless

lift Ziffle

Maquette for #5, Bulal-chashm, 16% x 21 Vi

constitute — like the "niches" thatestablish the step patterns inStella's earliest shaped canvases —a fixed, a priori vocabulary offorms. Thus Stella's rigorous self-limitation here to these particularIrregular Curves is finally anextension, a more baroque exploitation, of his earlier methods —that of the Protractor Series

Maquette for #6, Shoubeegi, 16% x 21%'

especially. In the Indian Birds, asin all Stella's prior series, thecomposition of these received formsis designed to provide a basis forthe act of painting. "In order tostart painting," he insists, "I have tohave a structure worth painting on.If it fails — as in all my earlierwork — it fails by what happenedbefore I begin painting."

In the maquettes for the IndianBirds, there is virtually no painting.With the exception of some scumbled color or scribble — designed tobridge the color gaps on some of theimprinted tin — the material wasused as found, though it wasselected for variety, "so it wouldn'tall say Root Beer." Thus we have tounderstand the models as focusing

Maquette for #7, Harewa, 16% x 2V/2"

essentially on the first step ofStella's procedure: providing thestructure. The process of paintingcame into play only in the realizationof the large, definitive reliefs (shownin January 1979 at the CastelliGallery), which were executed5.5 times larger than the models.

In the maquettes, then, suchcolor as exists remains largely

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"aleatory," on the level of a controlled accident. It had to be bright,irregular in its patches, and sufficiently atomized to dissolve the hardforms into pictorial scintillation.That we can read the print — "CanadaDry," "Coca-Cola," etc. —amuses us;it is as if Stella had cut his patternsfrom the raw material of Pop Art(though in India the sheet stock does

Maquette for #8, Khar-pidda , 21% x 161/2"

not pass for Pop — it's just considered scrap). But the cutting-outof specific forms from a sheet of Popmaterial, actually a field of colorsand letters created by the multiplemisprintings, allowed Stella to seethe scored pieces as abstract partsinviting reassembly. In a mannernot wholly unrelated to JacksonPollock's paintings (one of Stella's

earliest loves), the fragmentationof color in the models, combinedwith the interweaving of theirarabesqued forms, creates a senseof allover flicker and activity thatkeeps the surfaces alive andpictorial — and thus keeps thesereliefs closer to the art of paintingthan of sculpture.

In the full-scale Indian Birds, the

Maquette for #9, Thirthira, 16% x 2V/2"

accidental printed patterns of the tinwere replaced by brash, glittering,often metallic colors (sometimestextured by metallic shavings). Theheightened colorism of these workshas suggested to some critics theambience of Little Italy or Las Vegas;some have been shocked by whatthey considered "distasteful" color.For Stella the question is elsewhere.

"If you want to think that way, forgetabout art," he observes. "There areno wrong colors. Nothing failsbecause it has vulgar or theatricalcolor. Things fail when they don'tmake it as art."

More than that of any otherpainter of his age, Stella's art hasbeen a constant challenge to taste,to received values. In this sense the

Maquette for #10, Shama, 141/2 x 21%"

brash and variegated coloring of theBird series functions like the implacable "non-color" of his earliestpictures; and if the earlier styledared a definition of painting basedon an unprecedented minimum ofvisual incident, the new ones challenge by incorporating a maximumof it. The models only hint at this,however; only in the larger works

is the challenge fully bodied forth.What I have always liked about

Stella's art is that it consistentlyforced me to expand the boundariesof my experience. Indeed, it hasexpanded the definition of whatpainting can be, to the profit of awhole generation of artists.

William Rubin

Maquette for #11, Kastura, 21% x 16%" Maquette for #12, Pachanak, 16% x 22"

Copyright © 1979

The Museum of Modern Art, New York

Photos of the artist at work by Surid Sarabhai;photos of the maquettes by Bruce C Jones;photos of the drawings by Mali Olatunji

Design: Barbara Balch

The Museum of Modern Art

mi i iii mm

Drawing A for #3, Ram gangra,pencil on transparent paper, 22 x 17'

Drawing B for #3, Ram gangra ,pencil on transparent paper, 22 x 17'

Drawing B superimposedon drawing A, 22 x 17"