Lunch With Frank Stella
August 19, 2009 by Janice
I am practically speechless, still. And I don’t exactly know how to write about this, but on Monday, I had lunch with Frank Stella. Well, not exactly him in person.
Let’s see how do I tell you about this without coming off like a star struck blithering idiot? And how do I convey the impact of a rather large piece of paper with color on it? Just a piece of paper, right?
No.
Not at all just a piece of paper.
Here’s where the blathering comes in… and maybe some blithering.
It was a piece of paper that had changed my life ages ago. Like a beacon. Do this. See what this can be?
So when I turned that corner in my doctor’s building and came upon “The Fountain” by Frank Stella in all it’s 23 x 7 feet glory, I literally stopped in my tracks. My patient escort to the food court had to wait for me to double check the plaque to the left of the giant print on the wall. I turned and stammered,” it’s real… it’s a real Frank Stella.”
“Is it?”, my escort smiled and looked. Not wanting to seem crazy. Merely dazed. I rejoined our mission, my lunch.
Outside of New York and Houston I had never come upon one in the flesh. Oh sure lots of images, I pour over them in catalogs, books and on line, but to be walking to get a sandwich while waiting for your doctor to return from an emergency and meet one face to face… no, I ‘m checking… a first.
And not just any Stella. This is “The Fountain”. THE most major piece from his Moby Dick Series. There are only 8 of them in the world. I looked around at the med students and doctors sitting nearby. No they were calmly eating.
Did they not know?
Or was it something else?
Was it that I was in a place that actually knew that great art belonged exactly there where it was?
Now wouldn’t that change everything?
Well, yes.
Yes indeed it would.
So I walked on, got my sandwich and came back to a table that allowed me to get to know this brilliant piece of work just as if I had met a new and exciting friend in this city.
Everything shifted.
To be continued….
(The photo above is a press photo by Rex Larsen of Frank Stella and the Fountain at the Grand Rapids Museum opening 2009.)
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Wow…
Can’t wait for the next installment.