Ceci n'est pas un Stella.

| 10 Comments

Not a Stella (photo by Steve Marcus for the Las Vegas Sun

Not a Stella (photo by Steve Marcus for the Las Vegas Sun).

I have two reviews in the pipelines working their way to your eager eyes but in the meantime I couldn't pass up this story.

ARTINFO reports on a story from the Las Vegas Sun: There's a painting up near the bathrooms in a building of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas which everyone has sort of assumed is by Frank Stella. For some reason or other the newspaper decided to send a photo of the painting to Stella's gallery, Paul Kasmin, to see if it's really his. Stella says -- through his lawyer -- that it isn't his at all, and has asked that it be destroyed.

It wouldn't be a fun story if there weren't a twist, though. Turns out UNLV doesn't own the painting and they're not sure who does, since the nice old lady who loaned it to them died, leaving, like most regular people, no estate. So UNLV is unsure of whether it can actually do anything to the painting beyond leaving it right where it is.

Also, doesn't it look nice there?

Stella, for his part, has an alternate suggestion: Put a card next to the painting reading, "This is not a Frank Stella painting."

I think that's a great idea because, as far as I understand the current rules of the Game of Art, if the UNLV administrators go ahead and follow Frank Stella's over-the-phone directions to put that card up, they've magically transmogrified a not-Stella painting into a true Frank Stella Conceptual Installation consisting of a forged painting and a printed card in a juxtaposed configuration.

Which is, I think we can all agree, totally awesome.

10 Comments

I love this ~ so many angles at which to look at it! (The story, not the not-Stella.)

I like it just as it is. Hardly seems worth putting a card disclaimer up.

Stella is a washed up has-been who should have quit years ago.

there is a lack of symmetry in the photograph that bugs me. I'd be more concerned about that.

His work has been bogged down by his obsession with expensive materials and fabrication processes for years.

You hit it on the nosey. And I think that what you said is an accurate assessment of what he has been doing for years.

People can only do what they can do, talent-wise, and if they have the means to go for it and indulge themselves, it's gonna happen. It's hardly unusual. Rosenquist is a similar example. I recently saw a show of his which was downright ghastly. I seriously doubt anybody would have given such stuff the time of day if it hadn't been by, you know, Rosenquist.

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