SciArt Magazine - All Issues February 2016 | Page 6

Frank Stella, Gobba,
zoppa e collotorto, 1985.
Oil, urethane enamel,
fluorescent alkyd,
acrylic, and printing ink
on etched magnesium
and aluminum. 137 x
120 1/8 x 34 3/8 in. (348
x 305 x 87.5 cm). The
Art Institute of Chicago;
Mr. and Mrs. Frank G.
Logan Purchase Prize
Fund; Ada Turnbull
Hertle Endowment
1986.93. © 2015 Frank
Stella/Artists Rights
Society (ARS), New
York.

By Robert S. Mattison
Marshall R. Metzgar Professor of Art History
Lafayette College
Guest Contributor

For more than three decades, Frank Stella has been
using a group of spiraling linear and three–dimensional
configurations which he has described as graphic shapes
that “wind around each other and form an image almost,
a knot.”1 In this essay, Stella’s motifs are placed in their
larger historical and intellectual context. Stella’s twisting,
multidimensional forms reveal his interest in the natural

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and scientific character of vortices and turbulence, and
this exploration connects Stella’s art to some of the most
ancient and compelling motifs in history as well as to
one of the most significant scientific topics of our era:
chaos theory.
For Stella, the story begins in winter 1983 when he
was invited to deliver the Charles Eliot Norton lectures
at Harvard University. One night while relaxing alone
in the ‘masters’ apartments’ after a lecture, the artist was smoking a cigar and absentmindedly blowing
smoke rings when he reasoned that the smoke could

SciArt in America February 2016