I have tried to be rational, objective and evenhanded in thinking about the Clyfford Still Museum that finally opened this week in Denver. But it isn’t easy to stay in that place and here’s why.
The problem with Still is that many of us are holding a split deck on him and his work. On one hand many support his famously incendiary condemnation of hypocrisy in the art world (imagine what his response would be now!) and his unflinching refusal to participate in its shenanigans. He painted away, putting the works in storage. Very few were sold or circulated in his lifetime. The subversiveness of his extreme counterposition has its appeal.
But then there is that damned narcissism behind it all. And just plain bitchy curmudgeonlyness. His will stipulated that his estate would only be bequeathed to an American city that agrees to build a museum that will be a temple to Still and include nothing else. No works can ever be sold. No other artist can ever show a single piece alongside his. All Clyfford Still, all the time.
Are you serious?
There was a time when his massive canvases brought praise. Motherwell‘s response to Still’s first solo show in New York in 1946 was that it was “a bolt out of the blue.” Yes, the Stills are physical, soaring and overwhelming.
But there is something missing in the work for me. And I have been looking at Still seriously for 40 years. My problem is that even after having given his work serious time and attention, it feels static. The vibrancy I still encounter when I look at a Pollock or a Rothko or a Newman from the same era just isn’t there for me with a Still.
Much of the museum pre-publicity has been in answer to the “does he deserve it?” question that everyone has been asking, tacitly and at times overtly. Because Still’s full body of work has never been seen before, some have said the new museum is the first time Still can be fairly evaluated and appraised in the context of his own era.
That may prove to be true. But in the meantime I’m just not feeling a trip to Denver is going to do it for me.
I have never liked Still’s paintings, finding them massively inert. I had hoped to have a change of heart at the large show of his work years ago at the Met. They just seemed repetitive and a little bombastic. So no, I won’t be going to Denver.
I’m with you about “not-getting-it”, in regards to his oeuvre.
As for the stipulations about his museum – not to worry. Just let enough time pass and well, have you ever heard of the Barnes Foundation ? . . . . . .
Altoon, Always glad when we are on the same side of this view.
Adeaner, good point. Time does its work.
Deborah, I’m with you on this. I never liked Still’s sharp edges and dry surfaces. They just seemed to me like fractures against all the black he usually used. I am a big lover of black, but not the way he used it.
Also, when I was so immersed in the Rothko bio, I noted that he and Rothko were great pals at one time but then Still claimed that he taught Rothko to make abstract paintings and Rothko objected. It does seem that there was some initial influence there but Rothko made his own paintings and Still never wanted to see it that way. Comparing Rothko’s luscious and dreamy work to Still’s anxious and harsh work is no contest for me.
Besides not liking his work, I also do not like the obnoxiously arrogant personality he apparently had. After the first blush, I can’t imagine people flocking in to see a Still Museum. Aldeaner is right about the Barnes Foundation except that Barnes had a great collection. Still just has Still.
Yes, yes, yes, and yes. It appears that we all have a similar reaction to the man and his work. The paintings: dull. The man: it’s complicated. I have never lingered in front of one of his paintings.
His paintings feel more angry to me than anything else. So I don’t see them as inert so much as attacks and I’m not crazy about feeling that way, no matter where it’s coming from.
Still, they do create a reaction in me.
I guess I’m in the minority. I’d just like to suggest you try looking at Still with different eyes. That is, try seeing the work as if it were layers of fields of gaseous color, each field with fissures and holes that allow peeks at fields underneath. My experience is when I look at Still that way the work flows and breaths. On the other hand, if I experience it as what it is literally — jagged shapes of think paint laid side by side like a jigsaw puzzle, the paintings become dense and clogged up.
The other thing is to try to forget what a jerk the guy was. If we judged art by the personality of the artist it would leave only Fra Angelico and maybe a few others.