Art Basel Unlimited
Dominique Lévy Gallery, Marianne Boesky Gallery, and Sprüth Magers Gallery are pleased to present Frank Stella's Damascus Gate (Stretch Variation I) (1970) at Art Basel: Unlimited.Damascus Gate (Stretch Variation I) (1970) is the culmination of Frank Stella’s Protractor series, created between 1967 and 1971, and is one of only three such monumental Damascus Gate paintings. Stretch Variation I, which is 50 feet (15 meters) long, embodies a crucial turn in Stella’s oeuvre; the Protractor series would represent Stella’s final exploration of the formal and chromatic restrictions he had used to create his early striped canvases, and served as the jumping-off point for his work in three dimensions.
Of the three Stretch Variations, Damascus Gate (Stretch Variation I) (1970) is arguably the most rooted in the 20th century dialogue on the relationship between art and décor. Its interlocking arcs reference the embellishments found in medieval illuminated manuscripts, which Stella had studied as an art history student at Princeton. Over the course of the three Stretch Variations, Stella moved from an engagement with the decorative impulse in the present work to an emphasis on pictorial illusionism in the third variation. This play with representation—whether decorative or illusionistic—present in the Damascus Gate variations was unusual in the early 1970s art world, and unique to Stella’s practice: he chose to continue his pursuit of painting at a moment when the majority of his contemporaries had abandoned it.
Taking a broad view of Stella’s oeuvre—which now spans over half a century—Damascus Gate (Stretch Variation I) can be seen as emblematic of the artist’s resolute drive to undermine the picture plane while constantly shifting between geometric unity and optical instability.
Art Basel: Unlimited, curated by Gianni Jetzer, Curator at Large of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC, features pinoeering projects that transcend the classical art fair booth. Dominique Lévy is pleased to participate in Unlimited for the second consecutive year.