Frank Stella's Blues

Frank Stella has had a long and varied career.  He made his name in the 1950s with a series of all-black paintings, when that kind of thing was audacious; moved on to boldly colored striped canvasses by the 1960s; and in more recent decades, he’s used aluminum to make super-colorful, twisty, sci-fi-looking sculptures. 

This summer the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C. is showing a group of those works: Stella’s K. series.  They take their name from music:  Domenico Scarlatti’s keyboard sonatas, each of which has a K number assigned to it — from K.1 to K.555.

Turns out Stella has had a love-hate relationship with music his whole career.  Then again, WNYC's Sara Fishko thinks it might be better described as a hate-love relationship.

Hear the Scarlatti compositions that inspired Stella's K. Series:

Sonata K.54

Private Collection. © 2011 Frank Stella / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

Sonata K.3

Courtesy of FreedmanArt. © 2011 Frank Stella / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

Sonata K.51

Courtesy of FreedmanArt. © 2011 Frank Stella / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

Sonata K.454

Courtesy of FreedmanArt. © 2011 Frank Stella / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

Sonata K.94

Courtesy of FreedmanArt. © 2011 Frank Stella / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

Sonata K.17

Courtesy of FreedmanArt. © 2011 Frank Stella / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

With thanks to Fishko Files Assistant Producer Laura Mayer.