Clyfford Still Research

Clyfford Still

"Clyfford Still sold approximately 81 works during his lifetime. He had only 15 exhibitions. But neither statistic is due to a lack of demand for the pioneering Abstract Expressionist painter’s bold and uncompromising work, nor to a dearth of output.

Still’s contemporaries celebrated his outsized, exuberant paintings vociferously. He had arrived at pure abstraction between 1938 and 1942, shedding figurative tendencies earlier than his colleagues (many of whom continued to paint in a figurative-surrealist style into the 1940s). The intense effect of Still’s abstract shift was perceived quickly and deeply by the art world’s leading players. Jackson Pollock, the popular face of Ab-Ex, said Still’s work made the rest of the New York School’s output look “academic.” Comparing Still’s 1946 show at Peggy Guggenheim’s Art of This Century Gallery to other “early” Abstract Expressionist and Color Field shows (like his own and Mark Rothko’s), Robert Motherwell said Still’s was the most original, “a bolt out of the blue.” He added, “Most of us were still working through images…Still had none.” Clement Greenberg, Ab-Ex’s most attentive critic, wrote of Still’s shocking uniqueness in the seminal essay “American-Type Painting.” Greenberg said, “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.”

Still created thousands of paintings and works on paper throughout his 50- some-year career. He left New York in 1961 for a remote barn studio in Maryland. Before he died in 1980, Still completed nearly 1,500 works there alone. In a 1990 article in Art in America, Ben Heller, a celebrated collector and expert of Abstract Expressionism, estimated that Still’s estate consisted of 2,209 works of art. “750 oils on canvas, many very large (100 are wider than 12 feet, 210 are wider than 10 feet, and 198 are wider than 8 feet), and 1,459 works on paper,” wrote Heller. It turns out the collector was short a few hundred works—when the Clyfford Still Museum was completed in Denver in 2011, it received an excess of 830 paintings and 2,300 works on paper from Still’s estate."

"Still was among 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 Grace Hartigan, Willem de Kooning, Lee Krasner, Norman Lewis, Joan Mitchell, 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”).

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.

Born in 1904 in Grandin, North Dakota, Still spent his childhood in Spokane, Washington, and Bow Island in southern Alberta, Canada. Although Abstract Expressionism is identified as a New York movement, Still created his formative works during various teaching posts on the West Coast, first in Washington State and later in San Francisco."

I think that with Clyfford Still, I like him more than I like his art. I really love the piece I have included above... The colours, brush strokes, and composition are just beautiful. These pieces of his reminds me of two things. The first thing it reminds me of are the landscapes of The Four Corners in the USA (Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, etc). The colours and brush strokes reminds me of patterned clothing, as well as a landscape of the area. I really love the orange and blue. Especially that small blue mark in the bottom middle of the painting. There is a depth that Still has created here, even with a relatively flat painting. My eyes are drawn back into the blue and black, from the red mark on the right. The second thing this painting (and Still's others similar to this one) reminds me of is the transcription painting I tried to do at the beginning of this project. Back in the first few weeks I really didn't know what I wanted to have as my final piece, so I was going for anything at that point. I had decided to make a transcription painting using colour planes to see if it would kick start an idea. I ended up hating it. Anyways, these Still paintings remind me of what my transcription painting would look like if I continued with the idea.

I want to use these blocks of colour within my own work as well. I have to figure out how to do that without scrapping the idea I have for a more monochrome palette. Adding more shades into the palette? Adding one or two colours into the palette? Red? Green? Colours I know that I like together? I also really love that a lot of Still's paintings were done on paper. I really love using paper in my own work (as I have found out as the year progressed), and I really enjoying knowing the Still was making some of these beautiful paintings on paper.

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