Collection of the Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami

Le Neveu de Rameau

Artist/Maker Frank Stella (United States, b. 1936)

Date1974

Mediumacrylic on canvas

DimensionsOverall: 135 x 135 in. (342.9 x 342.9 cm)

ClassificationsVisual Works

Credit LineGift of Martin Z. Margulies

Terms

Object number85.0191

On View

On view

Collections

Art of North America

DescriptionStella's rejection of the expressive brushwork and rich palette of the Abstract Expressionists who preceded him is evident in this work from the series entitled Diderot, after the French encyclopedist and critic. In these huge geometric variations on his earlier, smaller, Concentric Squares, Stella favored a neutral, controlled imagery that derives its composition and content from the shape of the canvas. The painting owes its visual excitement to the conflict between the extravagance of its size and the simplicity of the concentric bands of color, which reflect the depth of the stretcher. The artist has created a vigorous dialogue, really a visual contradiction, between the flatness and thickness of the individual widths of color. Stella repeatedly used the pictorial rectangle, appreciating it for what he considered its consistent power and strength. He has indicated that it set a rigorous standard against which he measured his later, more painterly work.
Visual Description

This 11 foot by 11 foot square acrylic painting features a series of concentric squares in oranges, reds, greens, and blues, with a small orange square at its center. The square bands of color resemble thin frames nestled one inside the other, receding toward the small orange square at the center. The precisely aligned corners of the squares, the arrangement of colors (warm colors at the edges, dark near the middle, and bright at the center), and the small square at the core, combine to create a tunnel effect or illusion.