I have never looked closely at the Stella template in my head as it isn’t all that conscious. But I am taken by his easy relationship with the wall. His more recent work could bound off and be walk-around, but the things I’ve seen front the wall and seem to be the stronger for that self-imposed limitation.

Maybe I’ve been Irwined. Driving around L.A. at night a few years back and saw a store front whose window was a blank rectangle of glowing color. no fanfare - nothing - just that thing there. Old Irwin’s back in town? Or another hopelessly reaching L.A.-ism.

Tree:

Shall we say that Goya dined al fresco?

I like Scully better than Stella (although I like Stella’s writings a whole lot more). And Irwin’s working with transparent materials feels like it would grab me, although it’s hard to tell since only the ones that violate his principles of total immersion in the experience (ie, only those that are visible and therefore not transparent) can be photographed.

It was Goya. Thanks for gently squeezing that in.

Perhaps the appeal of some art can be understood intellectually even if it isn’t emotionally. That would probably require, as Tree says, some knowledge of art history.

I’m here.

Would laughter be considered an emotional response? I do my fair share of that.

For me anything that suggests a danger to one’s person will get my complete attention. Was it El Greco who did the painting of the giant chewing on a decapitated and badly mangled was-human? The surreal film (Dali?) where an eye gets slit by a razor. Until we become so disassociated from our bodies that such stuff is met with dispassion, we will continue to react with emotion - old reptilian emotion, but valid nevertheless.

On a higher scale I would hark back to the Pickett’s Charge Cyclorama, painted by P.D. Phillipoteaux. I saw it in Gettysburg and was almost in tears. You would think that something made for the market would be somewhat wooden, but it carries a sense of ardent desperation and death like nothing else I’ve seen. It is being carefully preserved and two hundred years from now, someone may stand before it and break down in tears. It is also a wonderful example of impressionist -tinged realism with a great sense of a summer day. This adds to the impact. By the way, my great grandmother sat on the banks of the Susquehanna River and listened to the far-off battle as it was fought.

There’s more along those lines: depictions of interpersonal relationships, a WWII memorial in Moscow if I were Russian. One of my books contains an x-ray of Hitler’s head taken in 1944. It is one of the most hauntingly spooky things I have ever seen. Many of these things, charged with universal and affective themes will last.

Having said that, significance, for me, starts with a compelling hold on my attention. I look, I look again, I want to go back. Then it might become a touchstone for me. Can’t say I’m a big fan and do little consciously to emulate him, but I do think about Brice Marden sometimes when painting certain things. I compare many of my efforts to a kind of Frank Stella template screwed into my head. so, a large part of significance comes from how an artist or work moves into my working life.

Abstract shapes and colors will grip me, but I can’t characterize the emotions I feel.

Anselm Kiefer gets my goat and will continue to do so two hundred years from now.