Frank Stella Short Quotes

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If we are the best, it is only fair that they imitate us.

Frank Stella
I see my work, as being determined by the fact that I was born in 1936.

Frank Stella
Time is what you have left.... you just march with it and use it the best you can.

Frank Stella
I do think that a good pictorial idea is worth more than a lot of manual dexterity.

Frank Stella
If you don't know what Ad Reinhardt's paintings are about, you don't know what painting is about.

Frank Stella
The paintings got sculptural because the forms got more complicated. I've learned to weave in and out.

Frank Stella
The painting never changes once I've started to paint it. I work things out before-hand in the sketches.

Frank Stella
I don't know how I got into sculpture. I liked its physicality, that's the only reason. I didn't have a program.

Frank Stella
I wanted something that was direct – right to you eye.... something you didn't have to look around – you got the whole thing right away.

Frank Stella
I know what I want, but it's physically beyond me now. I can work on what I can handle. It's a playoff between the object and my physical limits.

Frank Stella
The aim of art is to create space - space that is not compromised by decoration or illustration, space within which the subjects of painting can live.

Frank Stella
Architecture can't fully represent the chaos and turmoil that are part of the human personality, but you need to put some of that turmoil into the architecture, or it isn't real.

Frank Stella
The idea in being a painter is to declare an identity. Not just my identity, an identity for me, but an identity big enough for everyone to share in. Isn't that what it's all about?!

Frank Stella
I didn't want to mask variations; I didn't want to record a path. I wanted to get the paint out of the can and onto the canvas... I tried to keep the paint as good as it was in the can.

Frank Stella
There are two problems in painting. One is to find out what painting is and the other is to find out how to make a painting. The first is learning something and the second is making something.

Frank Stella
I hate to say this... it's made to order. Then, I disorder it a little bit or, I should say, I reorder it. I wouldn't be so presumptuous to claim that I had the ability to disorder it. I wish I did.

Frank Stella