Frank Stella: Black Aluminum Copper (2019)

Frank Stella, one of the most important living artists, is still producing vital work after more than six decades of art-making. Stella has relentlessly pushed the boundaries of painting and specifically abstraction itself. His deceptively simple description of his work - "What you see is what you see" - belies an unparalleled diligence and intelligence in this pursuit. Stella arrived on the scene in the late 1950s, with an emphatic body of work that immediately re-shaped the discussion on abstract painting. In this film, Frank Stella: Black, Aluminum, Copper, Stella revisits these seminal paintings on display in the 2012 L&M Arts exhibition. We follow the artist through the galleries as he looks back on his creative, intellectual, and practical approaches to his paintings. In addition to the artist in his own words, Adam Weinberg, Alice Pratt Brown Director at the Whitney Museum of American Art, explores Stella's education at Andover and Princeton, as well as his early years in New York City. Ann Temkin, Marie-Josée and Henry Kravis Chief Curator of Painting and Sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art, reflects on how Stella's early works blazed a trail in post-Abstract Expressionism. Frank Stella: Black, Aluminum, Copper is an intimate first-person investigation into one of the 20th Century's seminal series of paintings.