Frank Stella (1936-2024) was an American artist of the Modern Art Movement. He gained acclaim in Minimalism and Abstract Expressionism in the 1960’s. At that time many emerging artists were painting without representation of anything they saw. Stella used geometric patterns, shapes and often symmetry to create without viewed references. Many of his pieces are quiet large. Harran II is 10 feet x 20 feet in dimension. As you can imagine, many critics made much of this “post-painterly” abstraction. It survived mightily and is prized today.

Harran II is a visual puzzle that calls us to pause and to wonder. What do you see in the complexity and incompleteness of this pattern? What was he thinking? What am I thinking?

As with most important things of life, we consider this piece within a fragile and personal frame holding enormous swaths of belief and preference and equal swaths of cynicism and judgement. Is this an image of joy and possibility or is it simply folly and pretense? This could sound like a worldly consideration of Advent and Christmas.

May our prayer be that art will lead us through God’s mystery with all of the questions and choices it holds to the truth of love anticipated in hope, peace and joy and then born into our world long ago. May we look again at Stella’s piece and imagine in faith and spirit what he may have even asked us not to see.

In gratitude, faith and hope,

Sandy Prouty
Minister of Children and Families
Montview Church