Harry Cooper and Megan R. Luke

2006. 152 pp.
60 color and 18 b/w illus.
9 x 10 in.

ISBN 0-300-10917-2
Flexi-bound. $34.95
Copublished with Yale University Press

For Frank Stella, 1958 was a crucial year. After graduating from Princeton University, he moved to Manhattan and painted a series of monumental, colorful canvases that culminated in the first of his famous "black paintings." This book focuses on the thirty or so works he painted that year. The paintings reflect his transformation from a student experimenting with abstract expressionism to a highly original artist whose works changed the course of postwar art.

Presenting the entire group of works in color for the first time (except those that are lost and known only through black-and-white photographs), this handsome book details the course of Stella's career in 1958. The authors situate his work in relation to that of Jasper Johns, whose debut show in 1958 had a strong impact on Stella, and Carl Andre, with whom Stella shared studio space that year. Their analysis examines concepts of originality, repetition, assemblage, illusion, and opticality to forge a new view of Stella's early development.

Drawing on new archival findings, firsthand observations of the paintings, and interviews with Stella and members of his circle, this volume enriches our understanding of a fascinating and critical stage in the artist's development.

Harry Cooper is curator of modern art at the Fogg Art Museum of the Harvard University Art Museums and coauthor of Medardo Rosso: Second Impressions and Mondrian: The Transatlantic Paintings. Megan R. Luke is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of the History of Art and Architecture at Harvard University.

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