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Friday
Aug182017

Clyfford Still: “The Vertical Necessity of Life”

DateFriday, August 18, 2017 at 8:00AM

Clyfford Still - Untitled - 1960 - Oil on canvas - 113 x 146 1/4in. (287 x 371.5cm) - Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (click photo for larger image)Artist Clyfford Still (1904-1980) was known to be  an extremely difficult man, who eschewed the New York art world, resisted most critiques of his work, and very tightly controlled the ways in which his art was marketed, sold, collected and exhibited.

His evolution to an abstract style in the 1940s predated and influenced similar trends in other of his Abstract Expressionist contemporaries. One of his primary goals was to address what he saw as the monumental conflicts between humankind and nature. Still believed that art could play a moral role in a disorienting modern world. Vast, vertical fields of color became a key means of expression for the artist, and he would eventually influence a second generation of Color Field painters. His work does call to mind many of the vibrant, enormous stained glass panels created during the Middle Ages.

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

AuthorJill | CommentPost a Comment | Reference1 Reference |

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