Stella/Frampton and Film:
1958 and Beyond
Frank Stella’s impact on the world of postwar painting—namely the advent of minimalism—is well known; less considered are the colorful, expressionistic canvases which preceded his shift to the more famous Black Paintings. In conjunction with the Sackler Museum’s current exhibition Frank Stella 1958, we present two programs attuned to the fact that 1958 was also a year with filmic repercussions. Hollis Frampton (Stella’s classmate from Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts), pursuing his career as a photographer, had moved to New York City, where he began The Secret Life of Frank Stella, a series of 52 portraits made between 1958 and 1962. Nearly ten years later, as the avant-garde film strain known as structural film was flourishing, Frampton made (nostalgia). In it Frampton demonstrates his embrace of cinema as he records the destruction of old pictures, including one of his portraits of Stella. If 1958 was a crucial year in Stella’s career, it was also a notable year in the experimental film movement, containing contemporary instanciations of the abstract/lyrical film, the graphic/structural film, and the found-footage film. These two programs explore the connections between two artists, two media, and one year that saw significant changes in painting and film.