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This is fresh air.

I'm Terry Gross.

Today we remember the artist Frank Stella whose work was regarded as

revolutionary. He died of lymphoma Saturday. He was 87. His New York Times

obituary describes him as, quote,

a dominant figure in post-war American art,

a restless, relentless innovator,

whose explorations of color and form

made him an outsized presence, endlessly discussed and consular. and art of the 1960s. His early revolutionary work in the late 50s was a series of black

paintings, black stripes separated with thin stripes of blank white canvas. The austerity of those paintings contrasted with the bold brush strokes

and drips of abstract expressionism. Art critic Peter Scheldahl describes Stella's impact on abstract expressionism as, quote,

something like Dylan's on music and Warhols on more or less everything, unquote.

In the 60s, Stella moved on to geometrical paintings in vivid contrasting colors.

His work continued to evolve with paintings and abstract sculptures on a large scale. He sometimes used computer technology to generate images

that he incorporated into his work. Stella was also admired for his ideas about art.

In the mid-80s he gave the prestigious Norton lectures at Harvard University.

Later we'll hear an interview I recorded with Frank Stella in 2000.

Let's start with our first interview from 1985. In the first answer, he refers to

...