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Clyfford Still: The Man in a Long Black Coat
The painter's appearance and attire was as distinctive as his artwork (01:23)
Courtesy of: Rocky Mountain PBS
Clip from the documentary, STIL
Related:
Clyfford Still's Sublime Art
A new museum devoted exclusively to the work of the abstract painter is opening in Denver. A leading critic takes a close look at one masterwork
December 2011 |
By Peter Plagens
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Comments (2)
It must be me. But then, surely there are other insight or intuitive imagination - deprived readers out there who, looking at the Clyfford Still "abstract sublime" rendering in the December issue (The American Painter) did not sense a "three-act play" or experience "a stunning first notice, a rhythmic horizontal read and then a deep plunge into the painting's inner structure." No, what I saw was a kid let loose on a garage wall with a few cans of paint or the work of someone riding a myth to a certain notoriety because no one would admit that they had no idea what those blotches of paint really were, i.e., blotches of paint. Perhaps visiting the museum, I will be appropriately struck dumb by the enormity of it all.
Posted by Bernard Elliker on December 5,2011 | 04:34 PM
Much here seems irrelevant to me to help evaluate Still's work. Havig never seen it (the art) in the flesh, I would have been more interested to find out if the appearane of texture (such as in the painting to the left was sone with impasto techniques, or strictly light and dark visual tricks, I know a local building and mural painter we call Fairbanks John who has the same wild eyes of a fanatic, but that is irrelevant to his value as an artist!A Korean artist known as Ohm Cederbberg had a much more dramatc story than Still. But as much as I love Ohm and some of hia abstract expressionist works, I love and respect his work in spite of his struggles of a man caught between growing up in a medieval baronage and a communist revolution that cost him one family and gave him another in recompence, and how one can see that recompence in his work, which I'll let others praise. I'm just sorry I lost him when he went west as an old man, and wish someone could put us in touch again!
Posted by Edward C. Marshall (edromar) on November 27,2011 | 07:58 AM