Frank Stella’s Greatest Legacy Was as a Master Sadist

Was Frank Stella a sadist? More than once, I’ve wondered that while standing before his 1959 painting Die Fahne hoch!, a rectangular abstraction that features four black forms, each of which are demarcated by unpainted lines of white that pulsate toward the center. The painting, for all its austerity, contains a bizarre kind of beauty. It also hides a secret: its title refers to a Nazi marching anthem.Stella is one of those artists who is constantly linked to a one-liner he once spoke. His