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Clyfford Still
Clyfford Still, 1957-D No. 1, 1957, oil on canvas, 113 x 159 in, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York
Born	November 30, 1904(1904-11-30) Grandin, North Dakota
Died	June 23, 1980 (aged 75)
Nationality	American
Field	Painting
Training	Spokane University Spokane, Washington, Washington State University
Movement	Abstract Expressionism, Color Field painting

Clyfford Still (November 30, 1904 – June 23, 1980) was an American painter, and one of the leading figures of Abstract Expressionism.

Biography

Clyfford Still was a leader in the first generation of Abstract Expressionists who developed a new, powerful approach to painting in the years immediately following World War II. Still's contemporaries included Philip Guston, Franz Kline, Willem de Kooning, Robert Motherwell, Barnett Newman, Jackson Pollock, and Mark Rothko. Though the styles and approaches of these artists varied considerably, Abstract Expressionism is marked by abstract forms, expressive brushwork, and monumental scale, all of which were used to convey universal themes about creation, life, struggle, and death ("the human condition"), themes that took on a considerable relevance during and after World War II. Described by many as the most anti-traditional of the Abstract Expressionists, Still is credited with laying the groundwork for the movement. Still's shift from representational painting to abstraction occurred between 1938 and 1942, earlier than his colleagues, who continued to paint in figurative-surrealist styles well into the 1940s.

Still was born in 1904 in Grandin, North Dakota and spent his childhood in Spokane, Washington and Bow Island in southern Alberta, Canada. Although Abstract Expressionism is identified as a New York movement, Still's formative works were created during various teaching posts on the West Coast, first in Washington State at Washington State University (1935-41). His work of this period is marked by an expressive figurative style used in depictions of the people, buildings, tools and machinery characteristic of farm life. By the late 1930s, he began to simplify his forms as he moved from representational painting toward abstraction. In 1941 Still relocated to the San Francisco Bay area where, following work in various war industries, he became a highly influential professor at the California School of Fine Arts and what is now known as the San Francisco Art Institute. He taught there from 1946-1950 (with a break in the summer of 1948 when he returned to New York).^[1] It was during this time when Still "broke through" to his mature style. Still also taught at Virginia Commonwealth University from 1943-45.

Still visited New York for extended stays in the late 1940s and became associated with two of the galleries that launched the new American art to the world — Peggy Guggenheim's The Art of This Century Gallery and the Betty Parsons gallery. Rothko introduced him to Peggy Guggenheim, who gave him a solo exhibition at her Art of This Century gallery in early 1946. Later that year, the artist returned to San Francisco, where he taught for the next four years at the California School of Fine Arts.^[2] He lived in New York for most of the 1950s, the height of Abstract Expressionism, but also a time when he became increasingly critical of the art world. In the early 1950s, Still severed ties with commercial galleries and in 1961 moved to Maryland, removing himself further from the art world. He remained in Maryland with his second wife, Patricia, until his death in 1980. In 1979, New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art organized the largest survey of Still's art to date and the largest presentation afforded by this institution to the work of a living artist. Following his death, all works that had not entered the public domain were sealed off from both public and scholarly view, closing off access to one of the most significant American painters of the 20th century.

The paintings

Still was also considered one of the foremost Color Field painters - his non-figurative paintings are non-objective, and largely concerned with juxtaposing different colors and surfaces in a variety of formations. Unlike Mark Rothko or Barnett Newman who organized their colors in a relatively simple way (Rothko in the form of nebulous rectangles, Newman in thin lines on vast fields of color), Still's arrangements are less regular. His jagged flashes of color give the impression that one layer of color has been "torn" off the painting, revealing the colors underneath. Another point of departure with Newman and Rothko is the way the paint is laid on the canvas; while Rothko and Newman used fairly flat colors and relatively thin paint, Still uses a thick impasto, causing subtle variety and shades that shimmer across the painting surfaces. His large mature works recall natural forms and natural phenomena at its most intense and mysterious; ancient stalagmites, caverns, foliage, seen both in darkness and in light lend poetic richness and depth to his work. Among Still's well known paintings is 1957-D No. 1, 1957, (above), which is mainly black and yellow with patches of white and a small amount of red. These four colors, and variations on them (purples, dark blues) are predominant in his work, although there is a tendency for his paintings to use darker shades.

Education

Still graduated in 1933 from Spokane University in Washington. In 1935 he received a Master of Arts in Fine Arts degree from Washington State College (now Washington State University). In 1934 Still is invited to be a guest artist at the Yaddo artists community in Saratoga Springs, New York. Along with Worth Griffin, Still co-founded the Nespelem Art Colony in 1937 that produced hundreds of portraits and landscapes depicting Colville Indian Reservation Native American life over the course of four summers.

The Clyfford Still Museum

In August 2004, the City of Denver announced it had been chosen to receive the artworks contained within the Clyfford Still Estate. This highly sought-after body of work contains over 2,400 artworks (roughly 825 paintings on canvas and 1575 works on paper - drawings and limited-edition fine-art prints) representing all periods of the American artist's distinguished career and nearly 94% of his total output. The museum will also house the complete Still archives of sketchbooks, journals, notebooks, the artist’s library, and other archival materials.

Allied Works Architecture, led by Brad Cloepfil, was selected to design the museum’s facilities. With offices in Portland, Oregon, and New York City, Allied Works Architecture has wide experience in the design of art museums.

Removed from public view for over twenty-five years, these works will finally be revealed at the Clyfford Still Museum in Denver, Colorado, planned to open to the public in 2010, led by Dean Sobel. The Clyfford Still Museum is an independent nonprofit organization with its own website at [2].

Legacy

Major holdings of Clyfford Still's Paintings can be seen at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York; at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden and at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Each of these museums has a gallery dedicated solely to Still paintings. In addition, Still paintings are in the collections of many major museums. Because very few artworks made it into private collections, Still paintings tend to be highly sought after on the auction market. In recent years, Christie's has sold two: in 2005, a 1955 painting sold for $7.8m. In 2006 a 1947 canvas set a record at $21.296m.

Quotes

From Still

"I never wanted color to be color. I never wanted texture to be texture, or images to become shapes. I wanted them all to fuse together into a living spirit."

"It's intolerable to be stopped by a frame's edge."^[3]

"I am not interested in illustrating my time. A man's "time" limits him, it does not truly liberate him. Our age - it is one of science, of mechanism, of power and death. I see no point in adding to its mechanism of power and death. I see no point in adding to its mammoth arrogrance the compliment of a graphic homage."^[4]

"How can we live and die and never know the difference?"

From Others

• "Still makes the rest of us look academic."

Jackson Pollock

• "His show at (Peggy Guggenheim's The Art of This Century Gallery in 1946), of all those early shows [Pollock, Rothko, Motherwell], was the most original. A bolt out of the blue. Most of us were still working through images . . . Still had none."

Robert Motherwell

• "When I first saw a 1948 painting of Still’s . . . I was impressed as never before by how estranging and upsetting genuine originality in art can be."

Clement Greenberg, art critic; American-Type Painting', Partisan Review, 1955, p.58.

• "A remarkable and ultimately highly influential maverick . . . an independent genius."

Sam Hunter, modern art historian;

• "It was in the mid-1940s that Still asserted himself as one of the most formally inventive artists of his generation."

John Golding, art historian; Paths to the Absolute, 2000, Princeton University Press

• "With their crude palette-knifed and troweled surfaces, their immense space, their strong color, their relentless vertical and horizontal expansiveness, Still’s abstract works project a forcefulness perhaps unequaled in Abstract Expressionist painting."

Stephen Polcari, art historian; Abstract Expressionism and the Modern Experience, 1991, Cambridge University Press

• "A singular talent whose dimension will not be fully known in his own lifetime."

Robert Hughes, former Time magazine art critic; Time Magazine, Prairie Coriolanus, Feb 9, 1976

Notes

References

• Clyfford Still: Paintings, 1944-1960

James T. Demetrion (Editor). Publisher: Yale University Press (June 1, 2001), ISBN 0300089694, ISBN 978-0300089691

• Clyfford Still: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

John P. O'Neill (Editor). Publisher: Harry N. Abrams (1979) ISBN 0-87099-213-9

Further reading

• Nancy Marmer, "Clyfford Still: The Extremist Factor," Art in America, April 1980, pp. 102-113.

External links

• http://www.clyffordstillmuseum.org/
• http://www.albrightknox.org/ArtStart/Still_t.html
• http://www.clyffordstill.net/
• http://www.clyffordstill.net/biography.html
• http://www.clyffordstill.net/
• http://www.clyffordstill.net/quotes.html
• http://www.theartstory.org/artist-still-clyfford.htm - Clyfford Still artist page

From Wikiquote

Clyfford Still (November 30, 1904 – June 23, 1980) was an American painter, and one of the leading figures of Abstract Expressionism. He was considered one of the foremost Color Field painters, together with Mark Rothko, Adolph Gottlieb and Barnett Newman. Still's non-figurative paintings are largely concerned with juxtaposing different colors and surfaces in a variety of not regular forms.

Sourced

• We are now committed to an unqualified art, not illustrating outworn myths or contemporary alibis. One must accept total responsibility for what he executes. And the measure of his greatness will be in the depth of his insight and his courage in realizing his own vision.
  • letter to Dorothy Miller February 5, 1952; as quoted in Abstract Expressionism Creators and Critics, edited by Clifford Ross, Abrams Publishers New York 1990, p. 193

• The observer usually will see what his fears and hopes and learning teach him to see. But if he can escape these demands that hold up a mirror to himself, then perhaps some of the implications of the work may be felt. But whatever is seen of felt it should be remembered that for me these paintings had to be something else. It is the price one has to pay for clarity when one’s means are honoured only as an instrument of seduction or assault.
  • letter to Dorothy Miller February 5, 1952; as quoted in Abstract Expressionism Creators and Critics, edited by Clifford Ross, Abrams Publishers New York 1990, p. 193

• ..not paintings in the usual sense. They are life and death merging in fearful union (1950, on his own work, fh)
  • Abstract Expressionism, Davind Anfam, Thames and Hudson Ltd London, 1990, p. 138

• The best works are often those with the fewest and simplest elements.. ..until you look at them a little more, and things start to happen.
  • Abstract Expressionism, Davind Anfam, Thames and Hudson Ltd London, 1990, p. 137

• Through them (his paintings) I breathe again. (lost statement for his 1950 show)
  • Abstract Expressionism, Davind Anfam, Thames and Hudson Ltd London, 1990, p. 145

• I held it imperative to evolve an instrument of thought which would aid in cutting through all cultural opiates, past and present, so that a direct, immediate, and truly vision could be achieved, and a idea be revealed with clarity. To acquire such an instrument, however.. ..demanded full resolution of the past, and present through it. No shouting about individualism, no capering before an expanse of canvas, no manipulation of academic conceits or technical fetishes can truly liberate..
  • letter to Gordon Smith, January 1, 1959, as quoted in Abstract Expressionism Creators and Critics, edited by Clifford Ross, Abrams Publishers New York 1990, p. 194

• The work itself, whether thought of as image of idea, as revelation, or as a manifest of meaning, could not have existed without a profound concern to achieve a purpose beyond vanity, ambition or remembrance, for a man’s term of life. Yet, while one looks at his works, a warning should be given, lest one forget, among the multitude of issues, the relation I bear to those with 'eyes'. Although the reference is in a different context and for another purpose, a metaphor is pertinent as William Blake set it down: HE Vision of Christ that dou dost see – Is my Vision’s Greatest Enemy: - Thine is the friend of All Mankind, - Mine speaks in parables to the Blind: 'Therefore, let no man under-value the implications of this work or its power for life; - or for death, if it is misused'.
  • letter to Gordon Smith, January 1, 1959, as quoted in Abstract Expressionism Creators and Critics, edited by Clifford Ross, Abrams Publishers New York 1990, p. 196

• I am not an action painter. Each painting is an act. The result of action and the fulfilment of action.. ..No painting stops with itself, is complete of itself. It is a continuation of previous paintings and is renewed in successive ones..
  • Gallery Notes, Allbright-Knox Art Gallery, Vol. 24 summer 1961 pp. 9-14; as quoted in Abstract Expressionism Creators and Critics, edited by Clifford Ross, Abrams Publishers New York 1990, p. 197

• I do not have a comic or tragic period in any real sense. I have always painted dark pictures; always some light pictures. I will probably go on doing so.. ..Orchestral. My work in its entirety is like a symphony in which each painting has its part.
  • Gallery Notes, Allbright-Knox Art Gallery, Vol. 24 summer 1961 pp. 9-14; as quoted in Abstract Expressionism Creators and Critics, edited by Clifford Ross, Abrams Publishers New York 1990, p. 197

• I felt it necessary to evolve entirely new concepts (of form and space and paintings) and postulate them in an instrument that could continue to shake itself free from dialectical perversions. The dominant ones, cubism and expressionism, only reflected the attitudes of power or spiritual debasement of the individual.
  • Clyfford Still, interview with Ti Grace Sharpless, 1963; as quoted in Abstract Expressionism Creators and Critics, edited by Clifford Ross, Abrams Publishers New York 1990, p. 200

• I am not interested in illustrating my time. A man’s 'time' limits him; it does not truly liberate him. Our age – it is of science – of mechanism – of power and death. I see no point in adding to its mammoth arrogance the compliment of graphic homage.
  • Clyfford Still i Interview with Ti Grace Sharpless, 1963; as quoted in Abstract Expressionism Creators and Critics, edited by Clifford Ross, Abrams Publishers New York 1990, p. 201

• As for 'taste' as a criterion of painting I find that it is most frequently applied to work that is essentially insensitive, brutal or vulgar beyond question. Could it now be a term with political undertones to seduce, or cover profounder motives of exploitation? I propose it be kept to the wine cellar. There it deceives no one but him who over-indulges.
  • Clyfford Still, interview with Ti Grace Sharpless, 1963; as quoted in Abstract Expressionism Creators and Critics, edited by Clifford Ross, Abrams Publishers New York 1990, p. 201

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Clyfford Still