| Artist: | Frank Stella |
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|---|---|---|
| Title: | Jaspers Dilemma [Mitered Maze series] | |
| Date: | 1962-1963 | |
| Nationality: | American | |
| Context: | Minimalism | |
| Movement: | ||
| Materials: | ||
| Subject: makes a direct reference to Jasper Johns, who also alternated between monochrome and color; Stella also follows Johns's lead in making the work de-personalized and blocked on the surface plane; 2 square mazes side by side; while one tries to follow a perspective that illusionistically recedes back into depth or that projects outward, the image proves stubbornly resistant; the centerpoint of each maze is mitered, thereby undermining the illusion; slippage at the center; the vanishing point vanishes ("There is nothing more frightening than a centerless labyrinth," said South American writer, Borges.) No matter how we try to read back into depth or forward, we always end up back on the surface. Style: hard-edge, geometric abstraction, containing 2 mitered mazes that contrast black and white tonalities to color; the color proves arbitrary in the end since it is the geometry of the design that dominates. Optical vibration formed by the diamond shape located at center, spaning part of both squares; Minimalist reductionism to simple shapes that then yield complex percepts. Context: part of Minimalism's efforts to strip the image down to its skeletal primary structure; "less is more;" focus on the surface plane; you cannot read back into space illusionistically here, but only laterally across the surface; the painter as problem solver, rigorously systematic rather than emotional or expressionistic. | ||
