Getty Tomb

© Frank Stella / Artists Rights Society (ARS) New York
My gallery Comment Tag Order Photography*
View comments
No comments have been posted yet.
Add a comment
Please log in to add comments.
Enter your LACMA Collections username.
Enter the password that accompanies your username.
New to our collections website? Sign up to create an account and start saving your favorites. Please note that this account is not the same as the MyLACMA account you may have for ticketing and membership transactions.
Current tags
This item has not been tagged yet.
Please log in to add tags.
Enter your LACMA Collections username.
Enter the password that accompanies your username.
New to our collections website? Sign up to create an account and start saving your favorites. Please note that this account is not the same as the MyLACMA account you may have for ticketing and membership transactions.
* Nearly 20,000 images of artworks the museum believes to be in the public domain are available to download on this site. Other images may be protected by copyright and other intellectual property rights. By using any of these images you agree to LACMA's Terms of Use.

Getty Tomb

United States, 1959
Paintings
Black enamel on canvas
84 x 96 in. (213.36 x 243.84 cm)
Contemporary Art Council Fund (M.63.21)
Modern Art
Currently on public view:
Broad Contemporary Art Museum, floor 3

Since gallery displays may change often, please contact us before you visit to make certain this item is on view.

Label

Getty Tomb is one of about two dozen works by Frank Stella known as the Black Paintings (1958–60), which are composed of parallel bands of flat black paint separated by thin lines of unpainted ...
Getty Tomb is one of about two dozen works by Frank Stella known as the Black Paintings (1958–60), which are composed of parallel bands of flat black paint separated by thin lines of unpainted canvas. To make these works, Stella applied commercial paint with a house painter’s brush, which dictated the width of the black stripes. Eliminating illusionistic space and any narrative or symbolic allusions, this series called attention to the physical properties of paint and canvas, conveying Stella’s statement that “what you see is what you see.” With their highly controlled brushwork and minimal compositions, the Black Paintings were a radical departure from Abstract Expressionism.

Wall label, 2021.
More...

Bibliography

  • Hunter, Sam. Art Since 1950, American and International.  Seattle: Seattle World's Fair, 1962.
  • Tuchman, Maurice.  Ten Years of Contemporary Art Council Acquisitions: Inaugurating The New Contemporary Art Galleries.  Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1973.
  • Hunter, Sam. Art Since 1950, American and International.  Seattle: Seattle World's Fair, 1962.
  • Tuchman, Maurice.  Ten Years of Contemporary Art Council Acquisitions: Inaugurating The New Contemporary Art Galleries.  Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1973.
  • Richardson, Brenda. Frank Stella: The Black Paintings. Baltimore: The Baltimore Museum of Art, 1976.
  • Donahue, Kenneth. Los Angeles County Museum of Art Handbook. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1977.
  • Powell III, Earl A., Robert Winter, and Stephanie Barron. The Robert O. Anderson Building. Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1986.
  • Tuchman, Maurice; R. Welsh; C. Blotkamp; C. Eldredge; S. Ringbom; Å. Fant; J. Bowlt; C. Douglas; R. Long; L. Henderson; H. Watts; J. Moffitt; W. Rushing; W. Moritz; D. Kuspit; G. Imanse; E. Kasinec; B. Kerdimun; R. Galbreath; Judi Freeman.  The Spiritual in Art:  Abstract Painting 1890-1985.  New York:  Abbeville Press, 1986.
  • Storr, Robert.  Gerhard Richter: Forty Years of Painting.  New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2002.
  • Colpitt, Frances.  Abstract Art in the Late Twentieth Century.  Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
  • Zelevansky, Lynn, V. L. Hillings, M. Peternák, B. LaBelle, P. Frank, I. Katzenstein, A. Le Blanc.  Beyond Geometry: Experiments in Form, 1940s-70s.  Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2004.
  • Orsenna, Erik; Zelevansky, Lynn; Franz, Erich; Morellet, Francois; Le Nouene, Patrick. Francois Morellet: 1926-2006 etc...Recentes Fantaisies. France: Musee des Beaux-Arts d'Angers, 2006.
More...