The Grand Rapids Art Museum presents the work of Frank Stella in an exhibition by one of the great living American artists. “Moby Dick: Frank Stella and Herman Melville” is on view through May 3.
The exhibition features more than 30 monumental printed works from Stella’s “Moby Dick” series, a highlight of the artist’s four decades of making art. From 1985 to 1997, Stella created a major series of works linked to Melville’s classic novel.
Included in the exhibition are three monumental woodblocks (called matrices), measuring 7½ feet high and 23 feet in length, brought to Grand Rapids from the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra. The matrices have never previously been exhibited; the Grand Rapids Art Museum is the first art institution in the world to present the blocks along with “The Fountain,” Stella’s magnum opus in printmaking. The blocks are carved mahogany with etched copper and magnesium inserts.
“The Fountain” is among the largest and most complex works on paper produced in the history of printmaking. It was printed in an edition of eight, and is on loan to the exhibition from the artist.
Moby Dick was originally published in 1851 and was not initially well received. In 1930, the book was reissued, first as a limited edition by Lakeside Press in Chicago, and then by Random House in New York. It included 280 illustrations based upon pen and ink drawings commissioned by Lakeside from Rockwell Kent that helped secure the novel’s belated success.
A preamble to the exhibition includes a group of Kent’s ink drawings for Moby Dick and the original Lakeside edition of the book.
The Grand Rapids Art Museum is at 101 Monroe Center. For information, 616-831-1000 or www.gramonline.org .
