Jacobson Howard gallery is pleased to announce the opening of the exhibition Frank Stella: The Marquise of O – Paintings, October 28th through December 4th 2004.
The Marquise of O paintings belong to a body of work dating from 1998-2000, in which Stella was inspired by the writings of the isolated genius and German thinker, Heinrich Von Kleist. It is common practice for Stella to work in series, responding to a specific idea connected to the source of his inspiration. In the past, literary examination was afforded by Herman Melville’s Moby Dick, prior to the Von Kleist series.
The paintings of The Marquise of O offer an invigorating pictorial response to Kleist’s crisis of belief. Stella takes the innovative three dimensional language that is so characteristic and flattens it into two dimensions. The possibilities and limitations of the picture plane are once again brilliantly tested. The Marquise of O paintings resoundingly succeed in pushing the boundaries of space and painting.