RIP Frank Stella (The Disappearing Modernists)

 

Hiraqla Variation II (1968)

After hearing that Frank Stella died I started to read some articles about him, as well as other articles about modernism, and I stumbled on an article that was published in August 2022 titled The Disappearing Modernists, published in The American Scholar, talking about the double standard between modernism in music and modernism in art. Stella was a modernist, but I see his later sculptural work as postmodernist. But modernism in music is so much more complicated because of its temporal nature. Visual art takes less time to absorb and we can move from work to work around a gallery.  But at a performance of Transfigured Night, you're captive.
 

All the isms are difficult to suss out. I see rock'n'roll, punk, grunge, hip-hop, etc. as being postmodernist--whereas the rest of pop and rock as modernist, and perhaps metamodern or remodern. As to Frank Stella, and his DIY untrained approach to painting, is rock'n'roll in its spirit. His 1950s works were more joined at the hip with jazz, as were lots of other artists, most notably Jackson Pollock and the public's association of drip painting with Ornette Coleman--even though it was more the other way around: free jazz was the sonic equivalent of drip painting. Stella's geometric works could easily be used as a cover of a jazz album (as many of Stuart Davis' were), and I believe one of the "pinstripe" paintings was. (One of the pinstripes was used for the cover of a classical album as well, seeing it in passing on a Google image search). But once you get past the isms the work just resonates, in particular the big colorful geometric shaped-canvas paintings from the late 60s, which inspired me--even in the music, and they were also architectural. So it's all modernist in that regard.

In terms of the article, modernist music (Schoenberg, Berg) isn't like Stella's art. The geometric works go down a lot easier, although the later "scrappy" sculptures don't--at least in my view. They are modernist in name only.

The article asks "Where did it all go wrong for so much music of the 20th century?" I think that modernist classical composers didn't have the same kind of rebellion that visual artists did, and of course, there was Phil Glass, Steve Reich, Terry Riley, and others who influenced more rebellious postmodern rock musicians. It has something to do with the variety of forms and styles, and not just orchestral writing. Changing styles lets you explore other isms. Sculpture got Stella into postmodern territory while still being essentially a modernist. In music, I don't think a drum machine has been used in serialism, although maybe it has. It would still be modernist. It's not rebelling against anything--it's just experimental. If it's using serialism as a parody, then that's postmodernist.