Information about the Stella Room:
(MIT Tech Talk, Nov. 1, 1995)

"Imagine a painting that combines the pointed pictorial drama of Picasso's Night Fishing at Antibes (1939), the expansive, aquatic ease of Matisse's Oceania, the Sea (1946), and the continuous coloristic curve of Stella's dome in [Toronto's] Princess of Wales Theater (1993)," wrote Robert K. Wallace of a dramatic 1994 artwork by renowned artist Frank Stella.

Now imagine this artwork covering the walls of an MIT conference room.

The piece, Loohooloo (1994) is a recent work by Mr. Stella, a leading figure in the minimal art movement. It is also one of two colorful large-scale works by the artist that have recently been sited at MIT, thanks to the generosity of Elliot K. Wolk '57, an art collector with a particular interest in Stella works. The playfully named piece is being installed on the four walls of a specially constructed conference room in the Department of Architecture.

Evoking aquatic motifs and imaginary places, Loohooloo is just over 10 feet high and 97 feet long, and it projects up to 46 inches from the wall. The wrap-around installation, an acrylic on fiberglass, is named for a night fishing scene depicted by Herman Melville in his novel Omoo, which takes place in 1847 in Oceania on the coral reefs of a fictional site, Loohooloo.

In the novel, native fishermen spear-fish by torchlight on the coral reefs, hurling their spears into the breaking waves while behind them "the darkness of sky and water was streaked with a long, misty line of foam." Loohooloo does not depict these fictional actions in a literal way, says Professor Wallace, a faculty member at Northern Kentucky University who has studied the artist's work and its links to the writings of Melville. Rather, he writes, its painted surfaces signify "liquid motion, expansive space and continuous action," which "create comparable pictorial sensations."

"A viewer can enjoy this painting without knowing anything about Stella, Melville, Matisse or Picasso," Professor Wallace continued. "Its liquid images engage the eye as fluidly as the liquid syllables of Loohooloo lave the ear," while its abstract action "inspires a fluid reverie as the eye rides a continuous curve, ten feet high, around the room."

"Stella has frequently blurred the boundaries between painting, sculpture and architecture," said Professor William J. Mitchell, dean of the School of Architecture and Planning, commenting on Loohooloo. "This walk-in, three- dimensional, exuberantly painted piece carries to a new stage his investigation of the contested and ambiguous ground between these traditional categories. It immerses you in painted forms to create a space like no other that I know."

Please check out Additional Information about artist Frank Stella. (source: A website produced by students at Columbia University) (it's loaded with pictures and lots of GREAT information!)