Frank Stella, Khar-pidda, 1978

Mark Joshua Epstein: The title for this work is Khar-Pidda, and kharpidda is an Indian name for a bird that in English, we call a common stonechat, and it’s a bird that migrates to India in the winter, and Frank Stella did a trip to India in the 1970s, and saw some of these birds. What’s really interesting about this bird and the connection to the title for me is that the common stonechat is not a beautiful bird. It’s not a colorful bird. It’s sort of brown and grey and has maybe some orange on its throat.

So, I find it fascinating that Frank Stella can look at something that maybe isn’t beautiful, isn’t full of beautiful colors, and make something as dynamic as this, and I wonder if he was thinking a little bit about flight and this idea of migration and of birds moving around because this piece really feels like it’s flying around the wall, almost.