ABSTRACT
The career of Frank Stella, whose new paintings are on view at the Castelli Gallery, is in many respects a representative one of the 1960's. The paintings that Mr. Stella showed at the Museum of Modern Art in 1959-60 were works in which, in Mr. Fried's words, "parallel stripes of black paint, each roughly 2% inches wide, echo and re-echo the rectangular shape of the picture-support until the entire canvas is filled." On one level, at least, every Stella exhibition is more like a seminar on aesthetics than an exhibition of paintings. It seems to call for explanation, or explication, rather than for an unmediated response. Mr. William S. Rubin is himself a true believer in Stella's genius, and he enters into aggressive but sympathetic dispute with that other true believer, Michael Fried, who, until now at least, has pretty much set the terms of Stella criticism.
