Modern man

摘要

In recent decades Frank Stella, who is almost 80, has seemed increasingly out of step. A champion of pure abstraction in an age that distrusts purity and prefers its art to be topical, he is a survivor from a bygone era when artists conceived their mission as a heroic and hermetic pursuit. This aloofness is something Mr Stella relishes, claiming to have no interest in contemporary trends and dismissing Jeff Koons (to name one prominent target) as an artist for people with more money than taste. But a new show at the Whitney Museum, organised with the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, reveals an artist more relevant than either he or his critics care to admit. The comparison with Mr Koons is particularly apt, since the current one-man retrospective is the first the Whitney has put on since its Koons show last year.