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Frank Stella
Double Concentric: Scramble, 1971

Artwork Info

Artwork title
Double Concentric: Scramble
Artist name
Frank Stella
Date created
1971
Classification
painting
Medium
acrylic paint on canvas
Dimensions
69 in. × 138 in. (175.26 cm × 350.52 cm)
Credit
The Doris and Donald Fisher Collection at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
Copyright
© Frank Stella / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Permanent URL
https://www.sfmoma.org/artwork/FC.311
Artwork status
Not on view at this time.

Audio Stories

Take a closer look at this eye-scrambling painting

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transcripts

SFX: Sounds of a carnival– rides, a calliope, a shooting gallery.  

 

BARKER:  

Hurry, hurry! Step right up, folks! Feast your eyes on this dizzying, depth-defying spectacle– the uh-Double! uh-Concentric! uh-Scramble! Is it one painting or two, or are they eerily conjoined? Study these square, tandem bullseyes at your own peril!  

 

SFX: A beebee hits a target in the shooting gallery nearby. 

 

What you see is what you see, folks! One looms large, as the other recedes! Its a funhouse for the eyes! Can you reconcile the colors — Smaller to larger! Larger to smaller! — as they invert themselves in this visual labyrinth?  

 

SFX: A slide whistle 

 

Pick a color, any color, on the left! Now chase it! Chase it over to the right and youll find it in another size, and precisely the opposite order that it appears– back on your left! Ladies and gentlemen, is this witchcraft? Is this mesmerism? Is it two dimensions, or three? Is this simply a flat canvas, skillfully manipulated by symmetry, geometry, color and line…? Or are you in fact falling, falling, into the rabbit hole of your own cerebral cortex?  

 

SFX: A roller coaster goes down a big dip 

 

This wonder, once seen, can never be unseen — and if you find yourself in Wonderland, tell ‘em Frank Stella sent ya!  

 

SFX: Music up and out. 

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