When I see the paintings of Joseph Stella, particularly his modernist work, I am immediately engaged. They seem dense and complex, almost manic in their compositional content, yet the color and symmetry have an effect that I find calming. I often wonder how Stella viewed this work, what he felt from it. Not in an artspeak sense. Not academic jargon. Just how it made him feel.
Stella (1877-1946) was an Italian immigrant to this country who has often been linked with several movements- modenism, futurism, and the precisionism among them. There is a contradiction in this in that everything I find about him points to someone with an outsider’s mentality, someone who never felt himself a part of any group and with an “antipathy for authority” with which I identify.
Maybe that’s what I see in the work. I don’t know. I do know that I am drawn to the boldness and beauty of it. The strength of the lines. The depth of the colors. The sheer visceral bite of the image that when taken in as a whole seems to engulf you. Gorgeous stuff. Work that makes me feel smaller, even tiny, for a moment yet inspires me to want to move my own work further ahead. To grow and expand.
Maybe that’s how I classify other’s work in my head- by how much they make me want to do better, by the way their work’s impact becomes an endpoint for me, a goal that I hope to achieve.
The work of Joseph Stella is definitely such an endpoint. Now I must work…
thank you for this.
I LOVE this particular period of his work as well. I believe that bottom painting especially (having seen it in person many times growing up in St.Louis) is a masterpiece. It is a shrine to the majesty of Nature to me. He hints at the symmetry of a cathedral but a superior one…an organic one. Seeing what is there but too few see. Majesty.
If you would like to see my art go to images.google.com and type in “David Larimore” “paintings” and some of my work will present itself on various forums.
Yes, I think a lot of his work evokes that cathedral feeling. A sense of largeness and sanctity. Great stuff…
Joseph Stella has long been one of my most admired artists of the 20 Century; Does anyone out there know if he ever designed decorative objects such as (GLASS) vases?
Perhaps mold blown, similar to those of Rene Lalique?