(applause)
- Thank you, Sherry.
Boy, I didn't know if I was
gonna get a seat tonight.
I'm glad I got saved a spot.
I want to take a brief second
just to thank the Board of Trustees,
and the museum's incredibly talented staff
who are standing to give you their seats.
(applause)
Frank, congratulations on an incredible exhibition.
I don't know how many people
have been upstairs to see it yet,
but, it's an amazing accomplishment,
an amazing career which just
continues and continues on.
So, I wanted to focus a little bit on
your earlier years first,
because perhaps a few people in the audience
have missed some of that background.
I know you were born in Malden, Massachusetts
sandwiched in between Revere,
and Medford, Massachusetts just north of Boston.
You went to school at Andover,
followed by a bout with
History at Princeton.
- It's true.
- Nothing, nothing to object to so far.
So you started off from the course of History,
and I'm wondering what made you
set sail for contemporary art?
- Well, it's a tiny bit misleading since I was,
you know, around seven or eight years old.
My mother was a painter,
and she went to fashion school.
She painted a lot.
We painted on my bedroom windows in oil paint.
If it's Christmas, it's Santa Claus.
If it's Easter, it's the bunny.
And if it's Thanksgiving, it's the turkey.
Actually, the image that lasted
the longest is the turkey,
because I made a lot of sculptures,
and somehow they look like turkeys.
(laughter)
On the other hand, that was my mother,
that was oil paint.
My father taught me a trade
in order to take care of our house.
So I learned how to be a house painter
well enough to practice the trade
at a modest level, but nonetheless,
and, actually, house painting
I'm not sure now that we all use rollers,
and spray guns and everything,
but it's fairly tricky to prepare the wood,
and use the varnish,
and to be able to handle and handle the paint.
So I was used to paint.
It's the materiality of it all,
and that's the, you know,
from there it's only, I think,
chance one way or the other
that that became such a big thing.
- So I wanted to focus on the year 1958.
In fact, there was an exhibition about your work
that was organized by Harry Cooper
at the Fogg about your paintings
from the year of 1958.
And that's when you were first
plying your trade, as it were.
The paintings started off one way
in terms of their abstraction,
and by the end of the year your sort of
signature Black painting Series were emerging.
I wanted to ask,
what was sort of the impetus
for those Black paintings
from the abstractions you had been doing earlier?
- Well, it's a nice story,
and it sounds like it just goes along,
but when I left school, I was painting,
and I was interested in painting.
But the reality was that I had no idea
what I was gonna do, but I had time.
So, time on my hands.
I had, basically, 90 to 120 days.
You know, we still had to draft.
So before my induction exam, I thought,
"Well, what difference does it make?"
I mean, I'll go to New York,
and see what it's like not to have to paint,
and go to school at the same time,
but just work and see what,
and I had a few friends there.
So I just went and I found--
When I graduated my father gave me
a graduation present which was a check for $300.
It carried me, actually, quite a long ways.
Enough to rent a studio and get started.
I worked part-time
at the line-up house painting,
So I was working and painting,
and I thought I would go to--
I would, you know, be in the Army
and I would go on.
It wasn't anything so definite
that that was my career,
but it was what I was interested in,
and what I enjoyed doing.
As it happened,
that's the little things that appear
later on to make a difference
because when I failed the physical exam,
and it was a little hard to explain
because I certainly,
like all the other guys in the line,
said, "I wet the bed. I suck my thumb."
(laughter)
They were as uninterested in that
as they could possibly be,
and the end of the line were three physicians,
and they stamp it, stamp it,
and the last guy looked up at me and he said,
"You went to Princeton, didn't you?"
And I said, "Yes, sir."
And he said, "You want to go in the Army?"
And I said, "No, sir."
And then he said, "Well, I don't think you'd make
"a very good soldier, anyway."
And he held out a piece of paper,
and envelope and said,
"Put this between your thumb,
"and your index finger,
"between your thumb and your third finger,
"your fourth finger and your little finger."
"Yes, sir."
He said, "You have faulty opposition."
(laughter)
And I thought, "What am I?
"Some kind of defective monkey, or something?"
But anyway, the result of that was I was out.
And it seemed like, you know,
that there was nothing else to do, really,
but go back to where I was.
The ideas of going in the Army,
seeing if I would go to law school,
or do all those things.
In just a moment,
it was really just over in a few seconds,
and a telephone call
with a quarter to my father.
Maybe you don't want to hear this, but I'll ...
- It's good material.
- Okay, so I said, "I'm really sorry to tell you.
"I failed the induction exam."
And he said, "Well, too bad.
"It would have made a man of you."
(laughter)
So anyway, I went back to my studio,
and just drifted on.
And the point that
he's trying to make is yeah, yeah.
Well, the paintings I was making then were,
basically, landscape paintings,
bands of color painted back and forth.
A lot of people say they were
like Jasper Johns, Flag, and, certainly,
stripes and bands were in the air,
and they were repetitive,
but they were, basically, landscape paintings,
and if you wanted to say something about them,
there was a little different, I mean,
because they were really,
basically, in the style of what
was happening at the time,
but they were simply,
they were abstract, in one sense.
But on the other hand,
they were urban landscapes.
So it was all about where you were,
who you were, and the place being New York.
So you know, basically, they're yellow and black,
the taxicab and the asphalt,
and that's how they started out.
In the end, the yellow got painted out,
and then they were all black,
so that was the way it evolved.
- Speaking of Jasper Johns,
you invoked his name.
In 1958, he had an infamous show
at Leo Castelli Gallery.
Were you able to see that?
- I'm not sure, I mean, I knew about Jasper.
He was all over the magazines and everything,
and the idea of the flag was very popular.
I did see shows of Jasper
because I went to Leo's gallery all the time,
but it was, actually, the targets,
and, particularly, the green target.
The idea was
the centrality of it sort of the image,
and then the way they were made
which was with repetition.
The American flag was sort of,
you know, a little off-kilter to me.
I mean, I like the straightforwardness of the target.
I mean, it's kind of obvious what you aim for.
That and also you have to remember
what was in the air.
Things like, Beckett,
I mean, and the idea of repetition,
and simplicity,
and baring, bringing things down to
the bare bones was
not far out.
The other thing is that in the end
it became more or less
something that I could build on,
which was a sense of structure,
so you felt that you had something to work on,
and then once you had it working for you,
then which way it worked,
or which way it went was,
you know, a matter of how things played out.
- During those early years,
did you have a kinship with any particular artist?
- Well, I had to live with Carl Andre,
and Hollis Frampton.
I don't know if you'd call that a kinship,
but anyway.
- How'd that work out?
- It's grim.
(laughter)
You know, I can't bear Pepper Pot Soup,
which we spent a whole winter with,
but anyway,
and the wood chips and things like that,
and Hollis would never stop talking,
but outside of that the reality was that
there were a lot of things to see.
They were active, and so,
and it was, you know, people say,
"Well, you were a young painter then."
But there were a lot of other young painters.
I'm not exactly sure why it happened,
but there was a change of some kind
in which the normal assumption of careers
would be that an artist would work.
He worked for a while. He would teach.
He would do a number of things,
and maybe by the time he worked his way through things,
he would have a gallery exhibition,
or something like that,
usually in his late 20's or 30's,
if he was wildly talented,
and you know, it would go on.
That would be the idea,
but the idea of artists showing
when they were younger than that
didn't seem that they had enough experience,
or that it was worthwhile,
but for whatever reason,
the idea of the prodigy, or the young artist,
it was not popular,
but all of a sudden, it started to work,
and I must say, obviously,
it was about Jasper and Bob Rauschenberg
because when they were so catapulted
into the forefront, as it were,
and because they were relatively young,
and brought a lot of other things with them,
like Cy Twombly, and when that started
that made a difference, I mean,
it's not that they were that young,
but it was an idea that you didn't have to
go through a progressive growth
in order to have a career.
You could make an impact
at the beginning with what you did.
The turning point or the impact image
was Jasper's Green Target
in 1957, or '56, something like that
at the Jewish Museum.
The catalyst for that was Leo Castelli,
and that was it.
Leo changed from selling shirts to selling art.
(laughter)
- So you didn't immediately have
printmaking as the vehicle in your body of work?
- No. - You made a few prints,
but it wasn't until 1967
that you really began in earnest.
So, what changed?
- Well, Ken Tyler bothered me.
I mean, I was stranded in Corona del Mar
without a job and nothing to do.
I was working there for the University at Irvine,
but I'd been fired.
So, I was there, and my wife,
however, was working.
So we were there, and we had,
you know, a child.
We had things to do,
and Ken kept coming down saying,
"Why don't you try printmaking?
"Why don't you get interested in it?"
I had actually, I have to say, and I don't ...
You can do a lot of things.
I think most people do it, I mean,
for example, I find myself driving a car,
but I know nothing about cars,
nothing about driving.
The only thing I think I do have an idea is
I have some idea where I think I'm going.
(laughter)
But, but that's not always true, actually,
but that was printmaking, I just didn't get it.
I didn't see the point of it and everything,
but Ken, as you know, is very persistent,
and so I don't know why,
but I thought of making drawings.
I mean, I had no idea,
so I just thought of reproducing
the paintings that I'd made,
actually, because I had diagrams,
but no real drawings,
and so I made drawings of the paintings,
basically, of the striped paintings,
and I thought of them not so much as prints,
but as illustrations in a kind of book,
like that you would put in,
slip into sleeves,
and then you'd have, well,
like a kind of illustrated book with no text.
- But that slowly changed,
that feeling about printmaking to you?
- Well, I don't know if it changed.
I mean, it was kind of frustrating
for a long, long time, because I did try to do things,
and they never seemed to ...
Some things seemed to sort of work.
- This was in Los Angeles
at Gemini G.E.L. at that time.
- Yes, yeah, yeah,
and it was sort of slightly interesting
to be bi-coastal for a while or something like that,
but other than that,
there wasn't much in it.
It was hard, and all of the things
that I tried seemed, you know,
I don't know how encouraging other people were,
but it was only a question of working with Ken in the shop,
and the guys who worked in the shop, and what we did.
I could see what they did,
and what was going on was all good,
but I wasn't up to it, sort of,
I wasn't really very close,
and the things that I tried
which were, basically, like drawing on a plate,
which were, basically, like making drawings,
didn't really do what, in a way,
printmaking should do.
So I'm making prints, and we're doing things,
and Ken's telling me how wonderful they are.
And then they look, you know,
they look like whatever I was doing,
but on the other hand, nearby sort of,
you know, there was Rauschenberg's print of
all of the impressions of his body,
it was a tremendous print.
It was large and to me seemed very big,
and that seemed to me the right way to go,
but I was so far away from that,
and I didn't really understand how it was made,
so there was a lot to learn, in that sense,
but I mean, there's always a lot to learn.
- Well, your collaboration with Ken,
how would you describe it?
- Well, I've already used the word once, but.
- He's not here, so he can't hear it.
- No, you know, it wasn't that it wasn't--
You know, the thing was that drawing is one thing,
and making marks on aluminum plate is another,
but the result was when the ink,
and everything went over it,
and it hit on the paper, it was limited.
I mean, it wasn't actually there,
and that went on for quite some time,
and I think it was only until sometime
in the '80s when we were working,
when Ken came east,
and we were working in Bridgeport
at Swan Engraving.
There were a lot of magnesium plates around,
and they were etching their plates,
magnesium plates,
and printing plastic tablecloths,
most of which were sold in Mexico,
but they were quite beautiful, actually.
The plastic wasn't so great,
but if you took an impression on them,
and put it on paper it was really powerful.
The thing that, you know, finally the idea
of having the ink hit the paper,
and the other idea of really
making an impression of,
basically, relief printing that
the whole thing changed then.
Then it was easy to relate it to what
I was doing and the other things,
and it wasn't calling up things from the past.
It began to work both ways
with the painting and with the prints.
- Robert Hughes, the art critic,
described your partnership with Ken
as one of the great partnerships
in modern American art,
and I want to look over at Rick and say ...
- Rick probably quoted him, right?
(laughter)
- Probably.
You spoon fed it right to me.
So, Rick, can you think of other
comparable partnerships in printmaking,
either contemporary or older?
- Right, yes,
and before I cite a few,
which certainly keep good company with
Ken Tyler and Frank Stella,
is to understand the notion
which is primarily European,
the notion of a master printer
working with an artist in collaboration,
in close collaboration.
The other, and there may be more,
but the other model,
which is pretty much the American model,
although, there are precedents
for the master printer-artist relationship
in the history of the American print is that,
like, Warrington Colescott.
The artist, Warrington Colescott,
conceives the idea,
develops the design and then makes the print.
It's seamless.
With the master printer,
you will have a master printer working closely,
say, Aldo Crommelynck with Picasso
in the later etchings.
And there's a careful back-and-forth,
as was with Ken and Frank,
in which it's not just a matter of sending
a Gouache off to Brazil, and having the printers
make a print of that Gouache,
but it's a matter of being in close proximity
where during the proofing process
there is a back-and-forth.
"I'd like to do this."
"Okay, I'll see what I can do."
"You might try this." "Okay, I will."
It's that back-and-forth
which can be quite magical,
and to know Ken Tyler, to know Frank Stella,
their temperaments in terms of techno-curiosity,
and trying something and doing this
without being held back
with the notion of what one should do
was the magic of that, I think, partnership.
In terms of earlier examples, yes,
Aldo Crommelynck and Matisse,
Fernand Mourlot and Matisse,
Aldo Crommelynck and Picasso,
and actually, Fernand Mourlot
worked with Picasso to create
some extraordinary lithographs
during the early 1940's.
A little bit more current,
where you see the American and the European
sort of come together was in Ellsworth Kelly's
early plant lithographs
that he did in Paris where he worked with
Marcel Durassier who had worked
with all the important School of Paris artists
after World War II,
to come together to create something
quite, quite wonderful.
Those plant lithographs, by the way,
were transfer lithographs,
and they're exceedingly difficult to do
effectively to get that drawing
to drop off the transfer paper.
Ellsworth has said that, you know,
I mean, here's where the magic of Durassier
is Durassier was a master of doing that.
Ellsworth didn't do that, the two of them did that together.
- Ken didn't do it either.
We tried it, but it didn't work out.
(laughter)
That's what he brought down to Corona del Mar
was transfer paper, yeah.
- Oh, yes.
- He promised me that I wouldn't have to do anything
except just draw on the paper.
- It didn't really work out.
- No.
But neither did the plates.
They weren't that great either.
- So Rick, you authored Frank's
first Catalogue Raisonné back in 1983.
So I'd love to hear a little bit about
what inspired you to take on that project originally,
and what inspired you to take on
this new and revised
updated catalogue raisonné?
- Well, we seem to be candid up here on stage.
- Jordan had the idea, Jordan paid for it.
- I see.
The very first one, and it really,
just a little thing like,
"Rick, you need one more article to get tenure."
(laughter)
"And you have to do it quickly.
"It has to be vetted.
"You have to write it, get it out,
"and get notification of publication
"within two months."
I mean, that is not the academic timetable.
(laughter)
I'm sitting in my apartment,
and I had collected ...
The first print I bought was
a Frank Stella lithograph from
the V Series, Empress of India.
I had a couple of prints in my apartment.
I'm sitting on the sofa, and that's on the other far wall.
I'm going, "What am I gonna write on?
"What am I gonna write on?"
My area was early 20th Century,
and I'm thinking, hmm.
It really was, it's one of those little quirks,
like cranks, you know, this happens,
and then all of a sudden this happens.
Oh! I'll write on Frank Stella.
And there was nothing
really out there on the prints.
A couple important exceptions,
but, nonetheless, nothing that took on
the prints at that point.
So turned out an article
for Print Collector's Newsletter.
The editor called me in three days,
and said, "You got it."
I thought, "I do?"
And then I'm at the University of Michigan,
and the group over at the museum said,
"Let's do a show.
"Let's do a retrospective."
So, that's how it came, and ever since then, I mean,
the rest is an absolutely wonderful
career in writing about prints.
The second edition,
well, yes indeed,
Jordan's sponsorship certainly made it possible.
In 2012 in Detroit after the opening of
the Kelley retrospective,
we're having this celebration dinner,
and I'm talking to Jordan,
and people looked and said,
"Okay." And we shook on it.
He said, "Let's do a revised,
"updated edition of
"the Stella print raisonné."
I remember shaking hands.
In time it came to pass, and it was time for it.
I talked to Frank about it in 2006
when I did an exhibition of his
Moby Dick prints at the Grand Rapids Museum of Art.
I said, "Yeah, let's pursue this."
You see, at this point the first edition,
the last raisin number was 163,
and by the time we were moving into this
"Let's do an updated version,"
Frank had created 150 more editions,
and with, you know,
the good old catalogue raisonné number,
first edition number 163,
the second edition 315.
So it was time to do it.
The motive, it's an academic motive,
I suppose, but a personal motive was
to create a permanent record for the prints
just to have it in there and documented.
- Jordan, you are
a major collector of art work.
You have about 9,000 works in your collection.
- It went up today after visiting Tandem.
(laughter and applause)
- That's a beautiful thing,
and, I think, Tandem Press thanks you for that.
Many collectors choose not to focus
on works on paper or prints, specifically,
and you have very much
bucked that trend.
I'm curious what your thinking is.
- Well, As you know, I grew up in Portland, Oregon.
My mother opened a contemporary art gallery
when I was in the third grade,
so my first love is art of our region,
the Northwest, in all mediums.
Although, when I was in third grade,
and she was working with the artists getting the space ready,
there was this funny little cabinet
with these funny little shelves, and I thought,
"That couldn't hold sweaters or shirts."
And I went over and pulled out a drawer,
and I was looking down at this
fuchsia-colored artwork,
and she came over my shoulder, and said, "Do you like that?"
And I said, "Yes."
She said, "Well you can have it then."
It was a print by Stanley Hayter,
the famous British artist
who spent a lot of time in France.
So I guess years later when I,
in the late 1980's decided to start
collecting prints in earnest,
I guess I was coming back to my first roots
of works on paper.
Oddly enough and ironically,
when in the late '80's I thought I would,
obviously, continue commitment to art of our region,
because I think it's important for every one of you here
to support your local artists,
so they can thrive and be in your communities.
(applause)
When I decided to start buying
some prints in multiples,
I went to a gallery in Portland, the Augen Gallery,
who specialize in works on paper,
and I bought three works.
The first one I bought was
the Frank Stella from the Leo Castelli series,
the purple triangular piece.
So the irony of that happenstance,
later I bought the whole series.
(laughter)
I think the question which you asked earlier of Rick
is first one of the things that just,
I think, is so exciting about works on paper
is this aspect of collaboration.
I'm often asked,
"What do you think about years ago
"when David Hockney did Xerox prints?
"What about digital prints now, or 3D?"
My view is, whatever medium an artist wants to use
to get his or her ideas out, we are the beneficiary.
In the case of prints in particular,
works on paper, that collaboration for me
makes it even more rich and exciting
because in life, most things we all do
is in collaboration with others,
and it's that magic of coming together,
like you were talking about,
this happenstance of Ken Tyler and Frank Stella.
And the same way Kathan Brown
in San Francisco with Diebenkorn,
and Wayne Thiebaud, and we can go through across the country
with that magical relationship,
and how lucky we are that those people
who are talented in their own ways
came together so that they collectively
did something that was greater than
either one of them might do individually.
- Many, many collectors
would have stopped at a certain point,
and would not get involved in the publication
of catalogue raisonnés,
and have such an active lending program
to museums around the country.
What first inspired you to do that?
- Well, as my works on paper collection grew,
some museums began to ask
if they could borrow the work and show it,
and as some people have heard me say,
you know, I blew through wall space
before I was out of college.
I had a mother who operated a gallery,
so I heard her say a million times
when someone said, "Gee, Arlene, I don't have any room
"on my walls for this work by whomever."
And she'd say, "Look, if something speaks to you,
"and makes you feel good, don't pass it up.
"Put it under your bed.
"Store it, rotate it, but don't pass up something
"that speaks to you and means something to you."
So I kept buying these prints.
(laughter)
Some museums started borrowing the work,
and when I went down to that first exhibition
at the University of Oregon Art Museum
that now has been renamed.
The exquisite passion I felt walking in,
and seeing these works up
in the kinds of walls like you have here
in this magnificent facility, it was so exciting.
I thought it just couldn't get better
until people all came in like you,
and as you will when you get upstairs,
the joy that I will feel,
and I think Mr. Stella, too,
by seeing you smile, frown, gawk, puzzle,
all those things we do when we see work.
There's just such an exquisite joy
of not only having a passion for something,
but sharing it with others.
(applause)
- Frank, I'm gonna turn back to you.
You had enough of a break.
(laughter)
- I'm going to have a little more vodka.
- Yeah, there you go.
- So you were describing
at the outset of your printmaking
that the inspiration
for the images really came out of the painting,
but that process seemed to begin
to change over time,
and the prints seemed to take on
a more equal footing with your paintings.
I don't know if that's accurate or not?
- No, it's not really accurate, but it's okay.
I mean, but it's actually what happened,
one way or the other.
As I say, it was not only inexperience,
but I mean,
the reality of making drawings,
and using the drawings to become a print
was okay as a kind of
diagram or cataloging idea,
or cataloging of the images,
and it had, you know,
you could make the excuse,
or defend it in a way and say,
"Well, that's a nice way to have the images available."
The idea of printing,
and printmaking is editions,
and that means that it's available,
and in some sense reasonable.
It's hard to believe that now, but I mean, they were once
reasonable in terms of price,
but the reality is that it's ink and paper,
and you're making an image.
It wasn't getting there.
I mean, it wasn't really happening.
It was interesting, perhaps, I mean,
but not that interesting as actual prints.
I mean, there were a lot of possibilities
of ink and paper,
so I had the ink on the paper,
but the paper was okay, it was paper,
but there's a lot more that could be done.
Over time with Ken and the pour,
just going to the point of making your paper,
having relief painting go to such depths
that you're practically destroying the paper
while you're printing on it,
all kinds of things start to happen,
but it takes a while to make that happen,
and I think that a lot of things changed
not only in the way it worked,
or in my attitude towards it,
but a lot of things happened about
the idea of printmaking,
which is nothing wrong with
the idea of printmaking being an edition,
but, essentially, the notion is that
it's a reproduction,
and in a way, we couldn't get
anywhere as making it.
It's pretty much a reproduction,
but it's really a general motion,
or a general kind of idea
because what happens in the inking
of relief plates and everything,
a lot of people have their hands on it,
it moves, and changes.
Actually, in spite of what everybody thinks,
it's not much, but it's a lot.
I mean, the prints are not the same,
and that's partly, I think,
what helps them,
but I think it also is what drives
the kind of enterprise
when people can do things,
and work on things at both ends,
both with the etching, with the inking,
and with the paper making.
All of those things start to need each other
in a kind of desperate way,
and they all come together
in actually a fairly dramatic way.
Something like, I mean after all,
the inking is pretty much like painting,
and you pass the plate,
one guy's here, one guy's there,
and it became even more extreme
in some cases where the plates were collaged.
So then, somebody's over here inking a plate,
and somebody's over there,
and you put the plates together,
and then you push them down.
Well, all of that creates a kind of activity,
and a way of working
that makes the final result,
at least, you know, interesting sometime.
- So, your last print series
based on smoke rings.
- Is the opposite of what I just said.
(laughter)
- I just wanted to dig into that.
- Well, it's a little hard to dig into it,
but I mean, those are everything
that's supposed to be bad about
printmaking and art making now.
They were made, actually at Ken's direction.
I won't take all the blame for it.
They were made by--
Oh my goodness, I can't quite quote.
It's basically photoengraving,
and it's the same kind of photoengraving
of an image that you have on your money.
So these were engraved at Tumba Bruk
in a printing house
outside of Stockholm
that essentially, that in fact,
does print Swedish money,
but this fellow that Ken,
I don't know how he convinced him,
but, anyway, he moonlighted with their equipment,
and made the smoke ring engravings for us,
and he worked by himself.
We only supplied photographs of smoke.
We said, "Engrave it, do it your way."
In the same way that if you had
a picture of George Washington,
you'd make a photoengraving
that could be reproduced on the money,
do it with the smoke rings,
and those are the results of that.
We printed them pretty much straight up,
black and white,
and that's the way that they were made.
- Do you purposely seek out
complicated ways of printing things,
or was that the direction that
your sensibilities just took you in?
Did you want it to be layered,
complex and breaking the rules?
- No, I don't think there were any rules.
I mean, I think, you know,
relief printing has always been there.
I mean, there was something, I'm not so sure.
Traditionally, I guess it depends on the metal.
I mean, it could be steel, it could be copper,
I don't know, but what we found in Bridgeport,
which was a commercial line
of printing on magnesium plates.
Magnesium turned out to be kind of magical
as far as engraving goes
because the reaction of the chemicals
it etched deep and quickly and beautifully,
so I mean the plates are way better
than any other metal.
I mean, you wouldn't, if you had a choice,
and you wanted to etch a metallic surface,
if you didn't choose magnesium,
you'd have to have a very good reason,
or maybe you don't want to go very deeply for whatever reason,
but if you want to be fairly loose,
and have it work,
I think it was, you know,
but that was just finding what was there.
- So the nature of your abstraction
seems to a viewer
to have morphed over the years
into something
more and more Baroque,
into something more and more
expressive over time.
- Okay, you can say that, I mean.
- I just did, it's too late.
- But then there are the people who say,
you know, the earlier things
were far more profound
than the later so-called expressive things,
or just terrible.
I know you didn't say it.
(laughter)
I mean, I don't know exactly.
It follows essentially what happens
in the history of art, one way or the other.
I mean, there's development,
and some things develop in a way
you can understand the beginning.
It's very rare that the beginning
is more complicated than the end.
- You feel that it's manifested in the print?
- Yes, but I think that they are
way more complicated in every way,
but the point was that
they grew that way
because of what was possible
in printing, in making graphic work,
however, you want to look at it,
and that would be, say,
someone, for example, me,
who would say that Booster was a way
that was, you know, just a way
to show you where it could really go,
so you would follow it,
you would look for something
that was going to move in that kind of way,
so that that made the idea of reproducing,
or making drawings of something
that you had done before, it was over,
there was no point in that.
I mean, there was a future,
and, although, you would say it's not a print,
it would be in the category of multiple.
At the same time, say,
Bob Rauschenberg was doing
a Booster was being produced at Los Angeles.
At the same Ken was making molded,
I guess it's rubber.
Anyway, the Airflow with the Oldenberg piece,
so if you have, you know, that's actually,
you know, you could probably make
a relief painting out of that if you wanted to do it,
but anyway, that was something
that was happening that could be made
when you were working with
the process of making what were called
reproductions or printing,
so a lot of things were happening,
and the possibilities seemed to be
a kind of pressure.
You had to think about what you were doing,
and not only, I won't go as far to say as
why you wanted to do it,
but in the direction that you should go.
Ken was there to certainly,
not exactly encourage you,
but push you, actually.
He would say, "Oh, you should do that,
"or you should go that way."
- But the content itself of your abstraction
as you began to take on works
that were based on Olitzki's,
and works that were based on
Melville's Moby Dick,
they seemed to be outside viewer
to have more narration going on.
- Well, you know, this abstraction,
generally speaking, was considered to be
geometric abstraction.
The geometry was imagined,
or expected to be fairly straightforward,
a kind of plain geometry,
but I think that at a certain point,
the geometry begins to change,
and the ideas
seem to be that
not only spatially can the geometry change,
I mean, in the simple sense that
it becomes a kind of topology,
but there's a sense that
geometry can open up in a kind of way
that by using
geometric forms which already sounds
not good enough,
but anyway, that geometry in itself
can produce forms that can
not be exactly illustrations,
but can have a narrative sense,
so the geometry in the sense can tell a story,
even if it's only about its own development,
and what its possibilities are.
The possibilities are those possibilities
which engage you visually,
so that you have a kind of visual,
and dramatic impact which is roughly analogous
to the kind of impact that
say you could have in
a Heinrich von Kleist novella.
I mean, say the earthquake in Chile,
or something like that.
So it's possible that they can be related.
And that it's not, you know,
it's not such a terrible way to go.
- Can you talk a little bit about some
of your personal passions,
and how they've manifested?
I'm thinking about car racing, in general.
(laughter)
I know you love to drive.
- Well.
- So you said.
- It's really, I mean, there are two things:
One, there are other activities
other than art making,
and there's always a sense in which
another world is way more interesting,
and way crazier than the world you live in,
so if you're interested in being
a fan of racing or Formula One,
it's a nice place to go.
It's very different from the art world,
but in another sense,
there's another thing about racing that's
hard to, you know, hard to ignore,
and it goes both for any kind.
It's not exactly competition,
but racing is a perfect example of it.
In the art world you have
incredible amounts
of opinion.
So this is good, that's bad,
this is that, this is that.
People throw up their hands and say,
"Well, how can I tell what's really good?
"How do I know who this person is,
"or what they're telling me?"
But when you go to the racetrack,
it's not a problem,
particularly if they're horses.
I mean a lot of it.
There's nine or ten horses to choose from.
Everybody has their opinion,
and they put their money down,
and one guy goes to the window and collects.
(laughter)
So it's not, I mean, it's measurable,
it's not really a matter of opinion.
Although there are a lot of gradations and things,
but it's really different,
the kind of opinion from having a kind of result,
but I don't know the answer to that.
I mean, measuring accomplishment in the arts,
it's a matter, you know,
what I like and you like are different.
- So if I look at
your Circuit Series prints,
would I be able to recognize
specific tracks from Lemont?
- No, I mean,
if you could tell Vilallonga
from Zeltweg, you're pretty good.
The idea is not to map the specific circuit,
the idea is that what's the sense of
at some point you have to memorize the circuit.
So you know the plan, you know what it is,
and then you have to execute it.
You have to get around it, but on the other hand,
there's a slightly different way of seeing
everything that's around what you're focused on,
which is the cones,
the turns and where they actually are.
So, it's a different way of seeing.
You're always interested
in how people see, and people see differently.
I mean, it's equally true of,
you know, obviously, when you talk to pilots,
you know, it's easier, they fly.
The geometry is fairly straightforward,
fairly simple,
but why do they go out after they're done working,
and, you know, flip around as much as they can.
I mean, they want to get a sense of the whole space,
and they don't want to be limited
to slight inclines and slight declines.
So, they want to feel what their instrument,
or what they can do.
- So can you talk a little bit
about your use of titles?
They're a little bit unusual, perhaps,
for some people when they think of abstraction.
The titles seem to have
very specific connotations to them.
They're specific to me.
I mean, I like to have titles simply because
I like to be able to identify the work that I do,
and the titles actually are,
really have to do with a group of work.
If it's about Kleist, it's going to be about,
you know, different stories,
and those titles are available to me.
I like the idea that I'm working on an idea,
or working on a group of things,
and it's not gonna be hard for me
to identify them with titles, so I let it go.
Sometimes they look very much
like what they're supposed to look like,
and sometimes it's a pretty big stretch.
(laughter)
- So Rick, no pressure on you here.
How does Frank's printmaking
add to his artistic legacy?
Just pretend Frank's not here.
- Well, the prints which are, you know,
so related to Frank's work in other media,
I mean, from a certain perspective,
it's sort of a grand entanglement
in terms of image, in terms of materiality,
in terms of ambitions or abstraction
to create a very tangible, visceral experience
of abstract form.
I think the prints,
like Frank's work in other media, the prints, for me,
it's a body of work of compelling,
viscerally engaging works of art,
moving and touching
in a great range of expression,
from lyrical to darker casts of feeling.
The prints, if I were to write a history,
which I don't plan on doing
of the modern print.
Well, maybe this is, it's not meant to be glib,
but Frank's prints
would get a chapter on their own.
He would not be in with others.
They're that important
in terms of contribution.
I also like that Frank's ambitions
for abstraction found another platform,
I mean, another residence for abstraction.
You know, it's refracted through ink and paper,
and relief and projection,
and tactility of the paper
which is different
from how his abstraction
comes to rest in other media,
in metal, on canvas,
in other media.
It's a very compelling success story
for me that the abstraction
is as successful in another voice
as it is in other media.
- Has it fostered,
do you think, increased interest
in the possibilities of the medium?
- Oh, I think so, very definitely.
I've said before to docents,
I mean when I get a crowd,
I want to say that, you know, you talk about
the perpetual invention of Frank Stella
in terms of, you know,
in looking back and where it's come
in terms of evolution and elaboration,
and continuation, expansion,
variation and moving forward is that
of course, it wasn't self-conscious.
I mean, Frank certainly knows that,
and we know that, too.
Like, well I think I'm gonna just do something else,
you know, that I haven't done before.
In this evolution that he speaks about,
new solutions and new means for it,
gives us, in retrospect,
an array of options
within the realm of the print,
in terms of collaged plates,
hand-made paper,
watercolor stained, hand-made paper,
which is a substrate for layers of printed ink
off of scrap material from the relief paintings
which become a substrate
for painting with a brush.
If that doesn't offer,
or suggest new options,
and a revitalization.
I shouldn't say that, but I'm a print person.
I mean, it just gives print
such an extraordinary life,
and over some time to see that happening.
Just finally, and here it's crossing,
it's crossing media in a way,
and I'm bragging on his prints
by invoking another medium,
but I really think, in terms of
when you walk into that show upstairs...
...the prints, and I think he's done that,
he's invested the print with the power of painting
to bring you in
very quickly and personally
to embrace the viewer
in the way in which,
you know, a Whistler lithograph doesn't do it,
it does other things.
It does other things beautifully and aesthetically,
but not the way in which those
monumental hunks of inked paper upstairs
just cause you to pause,
and compel you to start thinking
for reasons why you stopped and paused.
I think that's a singular achievement.
- Ken Tyler has now hung up
his spikes in printmaking.
- Thank God.
- You are as productive as ever it seems
making new work in your studios.
Are there more prints in your future?
- No.
(laughter)
- No, I mean--
- I'm sure Rick is breathing a sigh of relief.
- No, no, I mean, I retired with Ken.
I mean, you can't do it alone.
I don't have that kind,
I mean, I don't have that kind of
energy and the ability to spend that kind of time.
It's very hard
to work without somebody like Ken,
or next door to me.
When I was working in the foundry with Dick Polich,
I mean, the guys that know what they're doing,
and want to do things,
they push you pretty hard,
but the good part is
you feel the pressure,
but on the other hand,
they have the ability,
and they know more than you know.
So they have things to offer you,
you didn't even know about.
So I mean, when push comes to shove,
they say, "Well, maybe this,"
and you know, maybe this is good enough
at least to get started or to go,
and from there, you know, you can make,
you can say you make progress,
but, sometimes, you actually make
kind of leaps that aren't necessarily
anything that you could have envisioned.
Sometimes, they're better
than what you expected.
People like to call it collaboration,
but I don't know if collaboration
is really the right word,
but maybe there's another word, better word.
The reality is that the personalities,
and the ability that they have,
and the knowledge that they have,
and you could say,
well, I'll say it now,
there's something about what they do and what they know,
and they have a feeling about art
that is something that, actually, I don't have,
but they're willing to push,
and make an effort,
and drive in a way about what they know,
and what they think it could be.
They love to push it in that direction,
you know, I feel bad a lot of the time
that I'm so, in a certain sense,
indifferent to their passion.
It's tricky, but in the end
it's a kind of marriage that works,
at least every once in a while.
(laughter)
- Well, I have to thank you for being
so generous with your time,
and for coming out into the cold weather,
although, I understand the cold weather
was in New York today and not here.
- It was messier, but not colder.
- We've gone for a little over an hour or so.
I think any questions that you have,
you'll just have to find Frank,
and see if he'll entertain you.
- We can take a few questions. - You want to take a few?
- Yeah.
- One final comment, how nice.
- Sure.
(applause)