Frank Stella - Editions & Works on Paper New York Tuesday, April 16, 2024 | Phillips
  • “Since I feel movement seen in different contexts takes on a different expressive quality, this flexibility was enlivening and useful rather than forbidding. It can spur the imagination rather than leave it in its own fixed grooves.”
    —Merce Cunningham, on Frank Stella’s set for ‘Scramble’ 

    As one of seven prints in the Merce Cunningham Portfolio, benefiting the dancer and choreographer’s innovative studio, the screenprint and offset lithograph Furg commemorates Stella’s collaboration with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. Following his appointment as artistic director of the company, the 1967 dance Scramble was the first piece for which Jasper Johns selected an artist to conceptualize the sets and costumes– Johns tapped none other than Frank Stella, beginning a robust history of the dance company’s collaboration with contemporary artists of the time. 

     

    Stella specified the colors of the costumes the dancers should wear for Scramble: the men wore single-colored jumpsuits, while the women dawned monochrome leotards and tights. These brightly hued dancers moved against the backdrop of Stella’s flexible set. Six vertical frames of different lengths and heights each held a single strip of colored canvas: purple, blue, green, yellow, orange, and red. Each was mounted on wheels to be moveable, allowing dancers to shift the formation of the space, allowing the horizontal bands of color to change the spectator’s perception of the dance action. As the name implies, Scramble was all about rearrangements, and as such, Stella’s set permitted the shifting of the set each time the dance was performed. Cunningham was thrilled by this set’s adaptability: “Since I feel movement seen in different contexts takes on a different expressive quality, this flexibility was enlivening and useful rather than forbidding. It can spur the imagination rather than leave it in its own fixed grooves,” he said. The form of Furg recalls this ever-changing set and performance, horizontal bars of the rainbow stacked upon one another in rearranged, often overlapping orders. 

     

    New York Theater Ballet performs an excerpt from Scramble with original costumes and set, designed by Frank Stella and reconstructed by Carmella Lauer. Choreography by Merce Cunningham. Music by Toshi Ichiyanagi (Activities for Orchestra). Danspace Project, New York, March 14, 2019.

     

    Other artists who contributed to the Merce Cunningham Portfolio include John Cage, Jasper Johns, Robert Morris, Bruce Nauman, Robert Rauschenberg, and Andy Warhol, all of whom collaborated with Cunningham on various pieces and performances. Such participation reflects Cunningham’s respectability among his contemporaries in the New York art scene and his continued influence on the avant-garde 

    • Literature

      Dieter Schwarz 1975.01F
      Gemini G.E.L. 583
      Richard Axsom 106

    • Artist Biography

      Frank Stella

      American • 1936 - N/A

      One of the most important living artists, Frank Stella is recognized as the most significant painter that transitioned from Abstract Expressionism to Minimalism. He believes that the painting should be the central object of interest rather than represenative of some subject outside of the work. Stella experimented with relief and created sculptural pieces with prominent properties of collage included. Rejecting the normalities of Minimalism, the artist transformed his style in a way that inspired those who had lost hope for the practice. Stella lives in Malden, Massachusetts and is based in New York and Rock Tavern, New York.

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Property from a Contemporary Family Collection

257

Furg, from Merce Cunningham Portfolio (S. 1975.01F, G. 583, A. 106)

1975
Screenprint and offset lithograph in colors, on Arches paper, with full margins.
I. 8 1/2 x 20 in. (21.6 x 50.8 cm)
S. 17 x 22 in. (43.2 x 55.9 cm)

Signed, dated and numbered 65/100 in pencil (there were also 30 artist's proofs), co-published by Multiples, Inc. and Castelli Graphics, New York, to benefit the Merce Cunningham Foundation, New York, framed.

Full Cataloguing

Estimate
$1,500 - 2,500 

Sold for $6,096

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Editions & Works on Paper

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