Frank Stella vs. Dana Schutz: Coolness and Passion in Art
This paper compares two works of contemporary art — Frank Stella's 1967 geometric painting Harran II and Dana Schutz's 2015 Cubist-Futurist canvas Fight in an Elevator — to examine how two artists working in visually similar idioms can hold profoundly different artistic philosophies. Stella's dispassionate, nonrepresentational approach strips meaning from form, while Schutz's emotionally charged, narrative style invites the viewer to reconstruct human drama from fragmented figures. Drawing on critical sources and the artists' own statements, the paper argues that beneath their shared brightness and deconstructed geometry lie irreconcilable views on what painting is for.
- Introduction: Two Paintings, Two Philosophies: Contrasting Stella's abstraction with Schutz's narrative dynamism
- Frank Stella and the Aesthetic of Cool Abstraction: Stella's nonrepresentational philosophy and formal principles
- Dana Schutz and the Narrative Power of Cubist-Futurism: Schutz's emotionally driven, story-based painting approach
- Harran II: Geometry, Color, and Dispassion: Analysis of Harran II's Protractor series design and tone
- Fight in an Elevator: Emotion, Story, and the Human Figure: Schutz's violent, humorous figural storytelling examined
- Conclusion: Geometry Versus Narrative: Contrasting philosophies synthesized through formal comparison
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What makes this paper effective
- The paper opens with vivid ekphrastic description of both works, grounding the abstract comparison in concrete visual details before moving to theoretical claims.
- It sustains a clear binary argument throughout — Stella's coolness versus Schutz's passion — and tests that argument against specific formal and biographical evidence.
- The paper integrates primary artist statements alongside secondary critical sources, giving the comparative analysis both personal and scholarly authority.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper employs sustained comparative analysis structured around a thematic contrast rather than treating each artist in isolation. By returning repeatedly to both artists within the same analytical passages, the writer prevents the essay from splitting into two disconnected halves and keeps the central argument — that form can be used to either suppress or generate narrative — continuously in view.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens with parallel descriptions of the two works, then devotes separate paragraphs to each artist's background and philosophy before zooming in on the specific paintings. The penultimate paragraph brings both works into direct dialogue, and the conclusion crystallizes the contrast in a concise series of parallel oppositions. This arc moves effectively from description to context to analysis to synthesis.
Introduction: Two Paintings, Two Philosophies
Frank Stella's massive 1967 painting Harran II takes the form of a geometric design that seems deceptively simple at first but becomes more and more complex as the viewer gazes upon it. The work is a series of rectangles and half-circles fused together, with bright rainbows of color embedded within them. The painting is childish in its brightness; the color palette strikes the modern viewer as very much of the 1960s and 70s, with its garish orange and blue shades counterpoised against brown and red earth tones. Dana Schutz's 2015 Fight in an Elevator is similarly arresting in its brightness, but in contrast to Stella's use of abstraction, Schutz's Cubist-Futurist approach carries a narrative sense of form. The work depicts a swirl of fists and legs. A brown-skinned woman in high heels fights with a man in a baggy white suit, but their faces are not evident — only the conflict in which they are engaged. Stella's work is flat and deliberately one-dimensional, while Schutz's is highly layered, with a busy visual field that suggests the two protagonists' angry, conflicted motions.
Frank Stella and the Aesthetic of Cool Abstraction
Frank Stella has been credited with revolutionizing Abstract Expressionism by introducing a radical new aesthetic. In 1959, his series of "coolly impersonal black striped paintings" were said to lack the "gestural brushwork and existential angst" of Jackson Pollock's works and those of other Abstract Expressionists.1 They were immediately well-received by critics of the era and set the tone for Stella's later works, which focused on the use of color and dimension. Stella rejected the notion that art was an expression of the artist's inner life and instead advanced the idea that paintings should be solely about form itself. He was a pioneer of nonrepresentational painting and resisted any attempts to ascribe "underlying meanings, emotions, or narratives" to his work, stating that his paintings were simply about the principles of "line, plane, volume, and point, within space" and "color, shape, and composition."2
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