Frank Stella, Zeltweg (V), 4.75X, 1982

Mark Joshua Epstein: The title of this piece, Zeltweg, comes from a car-racing track in Austria. Stella is really interested in this idea of movement and of cars kind of shooting around.

We can imagine it almost as if toy cars are shooting around this painting, going on the curves, falling off, finding a ramp, finding a straight road, and what I notice is actually that the only really straight things in the painting besides the edges are these red things that shoot up from the bottom left corner and then turn ninety degrees and go down again. So, if we’re a car, we’re really in danger in this painting.

Something that’s really interesting is also that Frank Stella is using so many different ways to get the paint onto this piece. So he’s scribbling, he’s using maybe a ruler to do some grids, he’s drawing really fast and then in some parts, maybe he’s drawing a little bit more carefully, but he’s playing with this idea of what can I do with the material?