Indeed, architecture has been a serious focus of his now for nearly 20 years—and his achievements in this area, at least in the eyes of curators at the world’s most prestigious museum, merited a solo exhibition: “Frank Stella: Painting into Architecture,” which recently ran at New York’s the Metropolitan Museum of Art for three months. (A companion show, “Frank Stella on the Roof,” is on view through Oct. 28, 2007.)

Stella’s interest in architecture is unabashedly and unapologetically about form not function, about a structure’s “pictorial” quality. Build a beautiful building, in other words, and a practical purpose can be found for it—and clients will come.