Frank Stella

In 1959, shortly after graduating from Princeton University, twenty-three-year-old Frank Stella embarked on a radical group of works that have come to be known as the Black Paintings. Like the other paintings in the series, Die Fahne hoch! consists of a stark geometric pattern of uniform black stripes—a dramatic departure from the gesturalism of Abstract Expressionist painting then in vogue. Further distinctive features include the deep stretcher on which the work is mounted, which allows the painting to assert its presence as a physical object; and the white lines, which turn out not to be applied but rather the bare canvas left exposed between areas of black pigment. Rejecting personal expression and illusionistic representation in favor of reductive intellectual structures, the Black Paintings redefined painting as a literal, object-based practice and anticipated the emergence of Minimalism during the 1960s. As Stella remarked: “My painting is based on the fact that only what can be seen there is there. It is really an object. . . . What you see is what you see.” Nonetheless, Die Fahne hoch! is not devoid of allusion. The work’s provocative German title, meaning “the banner raised,” comes from the marching anthem of the Nazi Party, linking the cruciform structure and dark austerity of the large-scale canvas to a remembrance of that period. The title may also be a reference to Stella’s contemporary Jasper Johns, whose American flag paintings, begun just a few years prior, paved the way for Stella to raise his own aesthetic banner.