Frank Stella: An Illustrated Biography

If Frank Stella tells us next to nothing about the artist's relations with his father, let alone about his art and career, is there any hope that it'll talk turkey about the women in his life? (This is, after all, a biography, and since Stella never saw military combat or the inside of a tramp steamer or of a guru's cave in Nepal, what else is there to write about?) The answer is no. Stella's first love, Terry Brook, does a quick judge Crater. First wife Barbara Rose says, What Frank wanted was a blonde Smith girl with a camel hair coat and that was me,, and then shuffles off. Guberman quickly introduces Kay Bearman, who often looked after Stella's daughter. Rose would drop her off at Castelli's gallery where Bearman worked as an assistant while Rose ran errands.

It was not in Kay's nature to object to the imposition, and she became quite fond of Rachel. By 1967 Kay was handling much of Frank's business, including helping him keep track of his ever increasing flow of offers and invitations.

Then, on the very next page:

Like most geniuses [Stella] has an intensity about his work that frequently leaves little room or time for the person he is living with.... In 1969 they were formally separated, then divorced. It was a stunning blow to both of them.

Then, on the very next page:

in early 1967 he came to Philadelphia with Kay Bearman. We played some men's [tennis] doubles, watched the pros play tennis in the Spectrum, and went to a party. He was obviously comfortable and happy around Kay.... They would hold hands a lot, and Frank had a happy, goofy look.

An alert reader might be puzzled at the assertion that Stella's divorce came as a "stunning blow" to him, or that he is now happily married to Harriet McGurk with no apparent further fallout from frequently having "little room or time for the person he is living with," or that the word "genius" has been slipped so offhandedly into the text. McGurk, by the way, arrives in the book on the wings of this woman-as-chattel sentence: "A huge printing press wasn't the only wonderful new thing to come Stella's way in 1975."

When Guberman summons a small cadre of critics to shim his narrative, the book's momentum grinds to a testimonial-dinner halt. Phil Leider, a former editor of Artforum, wrote in the magazine in 1970, "It is astonishing that even as [the Irregular Polygons'] are being made the vision of a monumental decorative muralism [the Protractor, series] is taking form in the artist's mind." Lordy, the way we wrote back then! That it was considered astonishing, for an artist to have an idea about both series A and series B at the same time makes one more sympathetic to the climate today, in which art is supposed to be dedicated entirely to the Other. Those who don't sufficiently appreciate Stella's art are implicitly scolded as dumb: "Alfred Pacquement seems to have understood [the Polish Village, series'] importance better than most." Guberman even delivers a preemptive strike against any criticism of Stella's future work: Whether or not Stella's architectural projects get built, they generate a great deal of interest and discussion." So, I imagine, would Keanu Reeves'.