I can't help it. He believes the modern audience will not be moved by conventional realism, hence his non-figurative style. The question of how his relief paintings fare in comparison with their twentieth-century antecedents becomes one of the relative virtues of abstraction as a mode of artmaking. But rarely have the advances made by abstraction been quantifiable. Its evocative power operates at a mysterious, sub-verbal level and its content seems to be explicable only in vague and shifting parameters that seek, but never find, the common ground uniting individual points of view.
Abstraction is a reflective more than a commutative act.
As observers, we may delight in its pictorial design, in its variegated field of action, in its decorative appeal. This seems to be the supreme accomplishment of these works and somewhat chillingly, the leading museum of modern art glorifies them. Since it is difficult to conceive of them as an effective instrument for social change, or as a cogent and methodical inquiry into the mechanics of human perception, perhaps we may best regard Stella's colossal relief paintings as an exemplification of the limitless freedom our society permits its artists to enjoy. Maybe some day the rhythms and forms of pure abstraction will acquire the presentational discipline that time affords music. But until then, our understanding of such visual effects is not adequately explicit to justify their priority over figuration.