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Two news items in NYC
The first one is CYA because the officer’s weapon was unholstered, ready to fire even though in recent campus demonstrations, the threat of violence is more likely from counter-protesters as well as the police.
The second NY story is about the passing of the American artist Frank Stella. His life reminds us how arbitrary and capricious our places in history as paths and projects become, especially in the putative “center” of national culture. I want to live as long as he did.
In February 2015, a pair of enormous stars, one in polished aluminum and the other unvarnished teak, appeared in the courtyard of the Royal Academy in London. These were by the American artist and honorary Academician Frank Stella, who has died aged 87.
For all their differences, the two stars were part of a single work called, with deadpan literalness, Inflated Star and Wooden Star. Given their size – each measured 7 metres in all dimensions – it seemed unlikely that these could have anything to hide. In 1966, in a dig at the mystical airs of abstract expressionism, Stella famously said: “What you see is what you see.”
It became the battle cry of a then newly emergent style known as minimalism – and also seemed to fit Inflated Star and Wooden Star to a T.
And yet Stella’s work raised many more questions than it answered. His stars were welded together by a tubular metal armature, as they were by their title. They seemed to be in orbit around each other, although which exerted gravitational pull on which was impossible to say.
www.theguardian.com/...
''I want to thank you for driving too fast and getting up here,'' said Michael Gallatly, a young painter, as he shook hands with Frank Stella, the artist. Mr. Stella had just concluded the first in a series of four lectures on the roots of modern art that he is giving here in Columbia County as a community service instead of spending 30 days in jail for speeding. The alternative sentence was imposed by a local town justice at the request of Mr. Stella and his lawyer after the artist had pleaded guilty to driving 105 miles an hour in his silver Ferrari on the Taconic State Parkway in 1982. Mr. Stella drove to Hudson Saturday in a black Audi from his studio and home in New York City, accompanied by his wife, Harriet, his 2-year-old son, Peter, and an assistant, Paula Pelosi.
Because Stella is a fast guy. He’s (been) known to drive too fast and to love racing. He has since traded in his Ferrari for a Volkswagen and traded racing cars for raising race horses.
Comparing horse racing to the art world, he says, “Racing is so much nicer than the art world, where everything is driven by opinion. At the racetrack, it doesn’t matter what people think. At the end of the race, one horse crosses the finish line first, and that horse is the best horse.
“It’s a lot simpler.”
www.kera.org/...
With a level of sincerity rarely seen when discussing the inner workings of bureaucratic institutions, the artist provided insight into the politics behind mounting a major museum solo show, pausing intermittently for effect. “You can’t lay out a museum yourself,” he said. “They build the walls and then it’s over. Once they build them, they tell you how expensive it was. When they’re done telling you how expensive everything is, then they tell you they’re losing time.”
[...]
Mr. Stella is known as much in his appearance for his signature big rimmed glasses and curly hair as he is for puffing on cigars. In 1995, he was even profiled by Cigar Aficionado magazine, which chronicled the beginnings of his now iconic smoke ring series of photographs, prints and sculptures. When Ms. Pollock called upon an image of two works from the series, Mr. Stella took the cue and appropriately reached for a cigar in his pocket. “I can only do this because my wife’s not here,” he chuckled.
“Are you still making those paintings?” asked Ms. Pollock, referring to the smoke series.
“Still milking it,” he replied.
observer.com/...