{"id":3243,"date":"2022-06-10T12:20:10","date_gmt":"2022-06-10T10:20:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/legacy.museum-reinhard-ernst.de\/news\/bravo-frank-stella-film-zu-jawlensky-preistraeger-2022\/"},"modified":"2022-08-05T14:05:13","modified_gmt":"2022-08-05T12:05:13","slug":"bravo-frank-stella-film-zu-jawlensky-preistraeger-2022","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/legacy.museum-reinhard-ernst.de\/en\/news\/bravo-frank-stella-film-zu-jawlensky-preistraeger-2022\/","title":{"rendered":"Bravo, Frank Stella! Film about the Jawlensky Prize winner 2022"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Waves, nets, boat planks, spray \u2013 and always the whale. We the viewers in the middle. In the middle of a whaling adventure. In the middle of art as an adventure. In the middle of a work by Frank Stella. To honour the 2022 Jawlensky Prize winner, the Reinhard Ernst Museum<\/span> has brought two large-format sculptures from Stella\u2019s Moby Dick series to life on film.<\/p>\n

Shouts echo across the deck, sailors launch boats in the water, waves crash against the ship\u2019s hull, the whale emerges, the hunt begins\u2026 The extraordinary combination of reliefs by Frank Stella and the exciting novel by Herman Melville make this short film a thrilling experience.<\/p>\n

The Reinhard Ernst Museum<\/span> has produced this film as a sign of its appreciation of the artist and is delighted to publish it in connection with the city of Wiesbaden and the Wiesbaden Museum.<\/p>\n

From 10 June 2022, the Wiesbaden Museum is presenting a major exhibition in honour of Frank Stella. A loan item from the Reinhard Ernst Museum<\/span> will also be on display. The work is part of the Moby Dick series that Stella worked on from 1986 to 1997. It includes a total of 266 large-format sculptures and metal reliefs, a mural, collages and prints. Each work in the series is named after one of the 135 chapters of the eponymous novel by Herman Melville.<\/p>\n

The idea for this series came about when Stella and his sons were watching beluga whales in a large aquarium and became interested in the sweeping waves and the shapes of whales. His observations induced the artist to read Melville\u2019s novel. He was fascinated by the story of Captain Ahab\u2019s vengeful hunt for the white sperm whale Moby Dick, which urges him across the oceans. This was also a metaphor for Stella\u2019s lifelong artistic motivation: \u201cI\u2019m looking for an answer to the question of whether abstraction is a more appropriate way of giving visual expression to the novel [Moby Dick<\/i>] than any illustration, however skilfully done.\u201d<\/p>\n

This entire series of works is so special due to its intermeshing of abstract and figurative forms in different materials and textures. The story\u2019s individual elements (whale, waves, nets, boat planks, spray, etc.) are all visible in the reliefs, without the artist specifying a chronological progression in them. When attempting to grasp and understand them, the references to the novel vanish at the same time. This way of considering things is similar to the restless hunt, in which the whale allows himself to be recognised occasionally by blowing on the horizon and appearing very close by at other times \u2013 and then repeatedly escapes his pursuers. By combining and overlaying shapes, Stella invites you to perceive more than one thing at a time. The legendary story of Captain Ahab\u2019s hunt for a large but difficult to catch whale named Moby Dick may be interpreted as Stella\u2019s own passion for the essence and future of abstraction.<\/p>\n

Enjoy the film about this fantastic art \u2013 and look forward to further work by Frank Stella at the Reinhard Ernst Museum<\/span> from the spring of 2023.<\/p>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\r\n\t\t<\/div>\r\n\t<\/div>\r\n<\/div>\r\n

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