Sundays with Clyfford Still: “The Most Influential Artist You’ve Never Heard Of” (12)

Welcome to Sundays With Clyfford Still.  I’m your host, M.K. Hajdin.

This is number 12  in the series.  You can read the other posts here.

CNN published a story about Clyfford Still today.  It covered the basics but I thought depended very heavily on Dean Sobel’s opinions, some of which sound rather familiar.

Excerpt below:

Clyfford Still, 1952  (credit: Erwin Blumenfeld via CNN)

The most influential artist you’ve probably never heard of

Denver (CNN) — Clyfford Still was one of the most influential artists of the 20th century, but it’s likely you’ve never heard of him. That may be starting to change though. More than a half-century after walking away from fame and fortune, the late painter is gaining renewed appreciation, with his work finding a permanent home at a Denver museum.

How the Clyfford Still Museum came to exist is nearly as compelling as the paintings on its walls. Still agreed to give away all his art in his possession to an American city that agreed to keep the entire collection intact after his death. He died in 1980.

Still is credited with being a pioneer of the abstract impressionist movement in the early 20th century. Yet the breadth of his artistic reach remains a mystery.

Click here to read the rest of the article at CNN.

Thanks @belovedbelove for the link.

A̶b̶s̶t̶r̶a̶c̶t̶ ̶P̶e̶n̶g̶u̶i̶n̶s̶ PH-313 by Clyfford Still, 1942

In this early Still we see the vertical lines that Still loved to use.  Remember that even his handwriting had this very long, vertical look to it.  It’s the signature of an ascetic: a person who turns away from the flesh in order to embrace the ideal.  The colors are still relatively drab during this period.    I think I see some decaying surrealism in there, with a bit of modernism in the shape of the yellow blocks – but there’s something about Still that’s too defiantly organic to be really modernist.

And it really does look like an abstract bunch of penguins.

 

In case you haven’t been following along and are wondering why I have mixed feelings about the Clyfford Still Museum, it is because I have tried repeatedly, and politely, to get some cooperation out of them in finding material about Still for this blog – only to be ignored.   The museum staff is too busy to answer public inquiries – at least too busy to answer mine.  Maybe because they’re too busy using the museum’s Twitter account to tweet fawning praise for local politicians or talk about their jazz record collection or what book they read instead of talking about anything that has something to do with the museum.   Possibly they might view me as some kind of competition, but that’s ludicrous.   I’m not selling anything here.

Then again, experts like to belittle the public opinion and consider it uneducated,  so perhaps that explains why they’ve been unwilling to help.  Maybe they’d be quicker to respond to their mail if my name had a MFA after it.

It’s more than a little ironic, but perhaps unavoidable, that Clyffie’s legacy is being looked after by the very kind of art snobs that he couldn’t stand in life.  It only underscores the need for public participation in the art world, even when (ESPECIALLY when) the art snobs try to lord it over ordinary folk.

I say this to every person I meet who seems intimidated by the art world:  “Your opinion is just as good as theirs.”   Because it is.

Questions? Comments? 

There’s the reply box, waiting just for you.  Or tweet them to me with the hashtag #clyffordlove .

Sundays with Clyfford Still is taking a holiday

Dear readers,

Sundays with Clyfford Still may have to take a three-week hiatus.  Last week it was pre-empted by a long blog post I wrote about Eric Joyce;  this week I am frantically busy getting ready for a trip to Ukraine.   I’ll be traveling until the beginning of June, and I don’t write my blog posts in advance like a smart blogger would, so Clyffie may have to take a vacation along with me.

Fear not – Clyfford will return in June.  And I’ll be back with photos of the Black Sea and my birthday party at Chernobyl.  I’ll try to blog or at least tweet during the trip, but I don’t know how much internet access I’ll have.  (I don’t have a mobile phone.  Yeah, I know, I’m a dinosaur.)

Love,

M.K.

Sundays with Clyfford Still: Truth Imagined (11)

Welcome to Sundays With Clyfford Still.  I’m your host, M.K. Hajdin.

This is number 11  in the series.  You can read the other posts here.

Illusions, in one form or another, have been the recurring theme of the blog this week, so it’s only fitting to end it with some words about finding truth.

1965 (PH-578) by Clyfford Still (Photo: The Daily Artist)

I hold it imperative to evolve an instrument of thought which will aid in cutting through all cultural opiates, past and present, so that a direct, immediate, and truly free vision can be achieved. (Clyfford Still)

Sundays with Clyfford Still: Elemental Magic (10)

Welcome to Sundays With Clyfford Still.  I’m your host, M.K. Hajdin.

This is number 10  in the series.  You can read the other posts here.

1950-M No.1 by Clyfford Still

Jagged orange stalagmites are submerged in a blue haze that turns them violet, as if we have stepped into a cave in the gloaming, or are underwater.

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.  — Clyfford Still

Sundays with Clyfford Still: The Golden Cord (9)

Welcome to Sundays With Clyfford Still.  I’m your host, M.K. Hajdin.

This is number 9  in the series.  You can read the other posts here.

It’s Easter, which in most religions is about celebrating new life.  Let’s hear what Clyfford had to say on the subject:

Untitled by Clyfford Still (late 1970s)

These are not paintings in the usual sense; they are life and death merging in fearful union. As for me, they kindle a fire; through them I breathe again, hold a golden cord, find my own revelation.

— Clyfford Still

On a blinding white background flame spirits leap and flicker and cool as they sink toward the bottom of the painting.

Sundays with Clyfford Still: One Man’s War (8)

Welcome to Sundays With Clyfford Still.  I’m your host, M.K. Hajdin.

This is number 8  in the series.  You can read the other posts here.

Untitled, Clyfford Still, 1974. Photo credit: SFMoMA

A howling grey wind in a night that has swallowed all color.  We’re just fragments of  red, yellow, blue and white,  engulfed in infinite darkness.

“I will always represent a one-man war against the abdication of individual will [institutions]  usually demand, and the confusion of purpose they introduce, since power is basic to their survival… We can never meet except in a state of armed truce.”

Clyfford Still, from letter to Dorothy Miller, July 15,  1952.

Sundays with Clyfford Still: Carrying the fire (7)

Welcome to Sundays With Clyfford Still.  I’m your host, M.K. Hajdin.

This is number 7  in the series.  You can read the other posts here.

PH1033-1976, by Clyfford Still

Today’s painting is PH1033, dating from 1976.    Bolts of jagged orange blaze their way through a cold white background like lava burning through an ice sheet.  A dab of brown on the left, which seems to float in arctic calm despite the orange bursting like a solar flare next to it, balances the monumental violence on the right.

“You can turn the lights out. The paintings will carry their own fire. ”  — Clyfford Still

Clyff's painting tools (credit: Cyrus McCrimmon

Here we have Clyffie’s palette and painting knives.  He painted with knives rather than brushes.  And he didn’t clean them any better than I do mine.   The last painting he ever painted was mostly yellow, it looks like.  (Want to see more palettes of famous artists?  Click here.)

Questions or comments?  You are warmly invited to leave a comment below, or tweet to me with the hashtag #clyffordlove.

Sundays with Clyfford Still: Why did he leave the art world? (6)

Welcome to Sundays With Clyfford Still.  I’m your host, M.K. Hajdin.

This is number 6 in the series.  You can read the other posts here.

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A rare color photo of Clyfford Still

Clyfford Still turned his back on the the art world and went on rejecting its elitism and snobbery for the rest of his life, only to be embraced and immortalized after his death.  It’s a genius strategy, because after you’re dead nobody can argue with you.  Nobody wants to disrespect the dead.   Still was perfectly aware that artists who have starved in obscure garrets all their lives are suddenly pounced upon as soon as they die, gobbled up and assimilated into the world of the “culturati”.  He just didn’t want that process to happen while he was alive, because being part of high society is fucking tiresome.

Sundays with Clyfford Still: His wife was an artist too, but no one remembers (5)

Welcome to Sundays With Clyfford Still.  I’m your host, M.K. Hajdin.

This is number 5 in the series.  You can read the other posts here.

Patricia Still and Clyfford Still.  (credit)

This week on Sundays with Clyfford Still we will be talking about a little known but vital part of Clyff’s life and work:  his wife, Patricia.

Patricia Still, like so many other wives of Great Artists, was an artist herself who got subsumed into her husband’s life and work.   As happens with so many other wives, all of her energy and lifeforce went into sustaining her husband, until she  lost her own identity and became part of him.  After he died, she managed his estate and made sure his last wishes were carried out.  The Clyfford Still museum in Denver was the result of her labor.

I couldn’t find a single image of her work anywhere.  (If anyone knows where I can find some, please contact me.)

However feisty and independent these women may be, as wives they are sucked into the gravitational pull of the genius male and are overshadowed, if not obliterated altogether.

This phenomenon is accepted uncritically by many male historians and critics who assume that women and their work are naturally inferior and that they are glad to shed their own lesser talent for the opportunity to be part of a legend, although a legend with a man’s name and a face that is not their own.

These women were not weak, foolish or unwise.  They are the products of a society that systematically deprives women of resources until they are forced to align with men for survival — then demands their submission, their energy, their will and even their very lives as payment.

Is it Clyfford Still’s fault?  No, I can’t say that it is.

Contrary to the popular idea of artists as being wayward, romantic substance abusers,  Still was a quiet, responsible family man.  The process of subsuming another human being and holding them in subjection is ubiquitously held as tradition in our culture; he alone cannot be held responsible for it – though it could be asked:  since Still rebelled against so many other institutions, why didn’t he rebel against that one?

My answer is this:

He couldn’t rebel against the very thing that kept him alive.

The erasure of women artists is not the fault of any single person, but the result of an oppressive framework which must be identified, targeted and dismantled before all of us have the freedom to be full and complete humans in our own right.   Only then will women stop disappearing.

PH-77 by Clyfford Still. Photo credit: Barry Goralnick

Today’s painting is from 1937, when Still was still painting figuratively.  Still’s work was deeply influenced by his father’s life as a poor farmer.  The viewer can almost  feel the aching backs of these these laborers as they scratch a meager living from an unwilling earth that will eventually swallow them whole.

Sundays with Clyfford Still: Clyff was the first punk (4)

Welcome to Sundays with Clyfford Still.  I’m your host, M.K. Hajdin.

This episode is fourth in the series.  You can find the others here.

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1962-D by Clyfford Still

Here we have one of his paintings from 1962.  A round red shape not unlike a sun peeks out from behind jagged black and white veils.

“I hold it imperative to evolve an instrument of thought which will aid in cutting through all cultural opiates, past and present, so that a direct, immediate, and truly free vision can be achieved. . .and I affirm my profound concern to achieve a purpose beyond vanity, ambition, or remembrance.”  — Clyfford Still

Clyfford Still was about piercing the illusion, facing the void, tearing down the establishment. He was a punk before punk existed.

*Although the punks didn’t have his oratorical skills and had to make up for it with loud guitars.  Not that I have problem with that.

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Questions? Comments?  That’s what the comment box below is for. 

You can also tweet them to me with the hashtag #clyffordlove.