A Closer Look: Frank Stella
Double Scramble II, 1968
Double Scramble II, 1968
Double Scramble II
1968
Acrylic on canvas
69 by 138 inches (175.3 x 350.5 cm)
Double Scramble II, 1968, painted just two years before the artist's major retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, is a bold example of Stella's sizable canvases that bridge the gap between the monumentality of Abstract Expressionism and the exactitude of Minimalism. Composed of two sets of concentric squares – one set snugly next to the other – on a single horizontal canvas, Double Scramble II approaches color in an orderly, almost mathematical manner.
The double format of the present work gives the painting extraordinary optical dynamism and challenges established modes of perception; Stella's ingenious arrangement of color and line draws the eye to the center of the composition and creates a dueling sense of receding and projecting depth.
Frank Stella, Décor for Scramble (1967) in Event for Television, 1977 (still). Directed by Merrill Brockway. Courtesy WNET-TV New York Archives. Décor ©2016 Frank Stella/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
Taking their name from a 1967 piece of choreography by Merce Cunningham for which Stella designed both sets and costumes, the “Scramble” series returned to the rectilinear format of the artist’s earlier works, following a period of experimental shaped canvases typified by the “Protractor” and “Irregular Polygon” series of the 1960s. Drawing upon the optically rich color palettes of those series, combined with the rectangular composition of Stella’s “Black Paintings”, works like Double Scramble are a synthesis and culmination of Stella’s two most lauded bodies of work.
Double Scramble II, 1968
Double Scramble II’s large scale allows for prismatic variation within the same palette and more nuanced range of color, creating an entirely new relationship to the viewer’s body, transforming the paintings from mere optical experiences to powerful physical entities. Standing before its pulsating forms, the viewer is confronted with a resplendent expanse that, in its precision and subtle tonal variation at once withdraws and advances, both into our space and into a recessional space of its own.
Double Scramble II’s large scale allows for prismatic variation within the same palette and more nuanced range of color, creating an entirely new relationship to the viewer’s body, transforming the paintings from mere optical experiences to powerful physical entities. Standing before its pulsating forms, the viewer is confronted with a resplendent expanse that, in its precision and subtle tonal variation at once withdraws and advances, both into our space and into a recessional space of its own.
Frank Stella, Gray Scrambled Double Square, 1964, Museum of Modern Art, New York
Similar works to Double Scramble II can be found in collections around the world, including Gray Scrambled Double Square, 1964, The Museum of Modern Art, New York.