The Waves: The Great Heidelburgh Tun

Over a period of 12 years, from 1985 to 1997, Frank Stella produced a major series of works in various media that are linked to Herman Melville's monumental Moby-Dick. The printed component of this project consists in four different series: The Waves, Moby Dick Engravings, Moby Dick Domes and Moby Dick Deckle Edges.
The Waves incorporates all three major motifs of the Moby Dick Project: the first appearance of the wave-whale shape, the most significant shape in the Moby Dick series as a whole: a variety of gutter shapes that the artist would develop during the history of the project: and the lattice shape.