Adrian Genie. Meeting Frank Stella

Interview with Adrian Ghenie

b. 1977, Romanian artist


Berlin, May 1st 2023


Frank Stella, Black Paintings 


Mihai Pop: What year did that story with Frank Stella take place?

Adrian Ghenie: I went to his exhibition in London, he had a big show on at the Haunch of Venison gallery sometime in 2011 after I'd moved away from London and Haunch was still in the Royal Academy of Arts space; Ben Tufnell introduced me: "Come to the opening and come meet Frank Stella at dinner afterwards!".

MP: And how did the meeting go?

AG: I introduced myself, "Hello, good to meet you, you know, I first saw your work in a trash bin at School no. 5 in Baia Mare." He started laughing, "What?!".


MP: What was the old man like?

AG: Likable, like someone out of Seinfeld, like a taxi driver. He pulled up a chair next to me and said "Please tell me the story!". And I told him how I was leaving school one day, I saw some tossed out brochures in the trash bin in the yard, some overturned boxes of brochures from the American Exhibition1, and I took one home with me. 

 

MP: They were probably cleaning up the school library and throwing out anything irrelevant...

AG: Yeah yeah, and what did they throw out? The art! I took it home, I was sixth grade so of course I didn't understand much, but it was on my bookshelf for years, I would look through it all the time when I was in college. I told Stella all this and he said "Aah yes yes yes, I remember! We were asked by the State Department to do that exhibition as part of the plan to use soft power to 'attack' the Eastern Bloc". Apparently, the exhibition was organized with the embassies of the countries in the Warsaw Pact and one of the artists was chosen to go to each opening, he said he got sent to Bratislava. 


MP: One by one? I remember you telling me they all decided to go to the same opening together and they picked Bratislava...

AG: No, he said each of them picked a place, so it's possible one of the artists was present in Bucharest too. Stella chose Bratislava. And he was telling me that when he got there he realized they had received the exhibition, the boxes of works were inside, but there were no posters with the exhibition in town, so the exhibition wasn't actually going to take place because some Party culturalist didn't want to host the American exhibition. But they didn't cancel the shipment or anything. He was there – they didn't tell him! – he got there and realized he'd come for nothing.

I think the guys in Bratislava didn't have the gall to tell the American Embassy "we won't do it!". I remember him telling me how surprised he was that the exhibition wasn't going to open, that he went all the way there, he remembered he liked the city and that he drank good beer... That's why I pulled up my chair closer to him, so he could tell me his story. It was suddenly interesting that out of that entire group of people at the opening, the two of us knew about that weird exhibition! The people around us were looking curiously at us, "what the hell are those two talking about?!". It was somehow funny that at his opening at 80 years old someone was reminding him about something that happened 40 years previously, imagine, he was our age when that happened! After that, we took a look at the exhibition together and he showed me his work. 


MP: Was it a retrospective?

AG: Yes. I remember he was talking about his series from the late '50s, The Black Paintings, saying he regrets he didn't keep a single one for himself, he advised me to always keep a few of my paintings. 



1. Referring to the catalogue for the exhibition The Visual Artist at Work in America, 1979. 


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