Frank Stella, Loomings (S-7, 3X – 1st version), 1986

Narrator: In this construction from 1986, Stella recycled from earlier works―a frequent practice of his. For example, the form projecting off the lower right comes from a French curve, a drafting tool whose outlines Stella often appropriated during the mid-1970s.

Jordan Kantor: I think that this idea of reusing previous aspects of your old production as an engine to create new works is something that can be positioned in the moment of the mid '80s very concretely.

Narrator: Jordan Kantor is a San Francisco-based artist.

Jordan Kantor: In terms of discussion around originality and invention in advanced art practice of the time in which artists are cognizant, suspicious, and rightfully wary of some of the ideology that comes with this idea of inventing a composition from scratch. And I think that one way to work around that or accommodate that sort of critical directive is to have work that incorporates things that were previously made, and may even refer back to the history of the readymade that goes back to Duchamp, for example. To do that in a way in which you're still able to move forward and have formal discovery for yourself seems to be a very interesting tension that we can identify in a lot of Stella's practice, not just in this work.