Frank Stella's Scarlatti K Series

In this review of a 2009 show, Roberta Smith explains that Stella's "new material is ProtoGen, a white resin that comes in sheets of varying thickness, used in making detailed architectural models that can be cut and twisted into often spiral-like forms. It allows an illusion of weightlessness that is new to Mr. Stella's work, and welcome. Worked by hand and refined on the computer, the pieces are dominated by coiled and spiral forms that levitate, billow and curl, suggesting sails, colored ribbons, the robes in old-master painting and free-form architectural elements."

Read the Washington Post review of the current show at the Phillips Collection here, and the curator's notes here.  An ArtNews piece on a show from 2008 is here.

Here's Stella on NPR's Studio 360 show (more photos of the sculptures here), talking about being inspired in his early years by jazz pianists like Lennie Tristano. and Jelly Roll Morton:


An article by Robert Hughes is here, and one by Deborah Solomon here.  And here's a public conversation with Stella from last spring (at 12:00 Stella demonstrates geometric structures at the blackboard):

Here's Ralph Kirkpatrick playing Domenico Scarlatti:

Some of Scarlatti's scores are available here.