FRANK STELLA (B. 1936)
The Quarter-Deck
Lotto 551
25 00035 000
Silkscreen, litograph, colour linocut, marbled, hand-coloured, collage on paper
Edition 58/60
109 x 171 cm
Executed in 1989
Stella’s Quarter-Deck is full of sharp, bright colours, and displays a number of techniques such as marbling. The piercing dark shape in
the upper half of the image has been likened to Ahab’s fractured leg, which makes sense in the context of the work’s title. This piece is
named after the 36th chapter of Moby Dick, which contains a key moment in the story, when Ahab convinces the rest of the ship’s crew
to be a part of his personal quest to seek revenge on the White Whale. Thus while it is an abstract work, elements of figuration seem to
creep in, reflecting some of the complexities of abstract painting that Stella was working through. In an interview in 1995 he discussed
the difficulty of abstraction, commenting that «it’s pretty impossible to have truly abstract painting, even if you begin with the abstract,
non-figurative base, which I actually do.»