The Late Works: Clyfford Still in Maryland

Clyfford Still Museum

1250 Bannock Street, Denver, CO 80204

September 18, 2020-March 21, 2021

Admission: Adults: $10, Seniors (65+): $8, College students and Teachers (with valid ID): $6, Youth 17 & under and Members: Free

Review by Madeleine Boyson

One of the enduring dilemmas faced by single-artist museums is how to maintain public interest while still producing inspired curation. Part of this challenge is a duty to investigate the truthfulness of the artist’s entire oeuvre—particularly, and perhaps especially, those pieces that are not of a single “signature style.”

A view of Clyfford Still’s PH-432, 1964, and a photograph of Still on display as part of the exhibition The Late Works: Clyfford Still in Maryland at the Clyfford Still Museum. Image by Madeleine Boyson. — A view of Clyfford Still’s *PH-432*, 1964, and a photograph of Still on display as part of the exhibition *The Late Works: Clyfford Still in Maryland* at the Clyfford Still Museum. Image by Madeleine Boyson.

In The Late Works: Clyfford Still in Maryland, on view at the Clyfford Still Museum (CSM) now through March 21, 2021, curator Dean Sobel examines Clyfford Still’s rich and experimental period after his hallmark Abstract Expressionist era. Bookended by Still’s removal from New York to Maryland in 1961 and his death in 1980, six of the museum’s nine upper level galleries survey the artist’s restless pursuit of artistic and individual truth in his last two decades. The exhibition’s approximately 40 paintings and 30 works on paper cohere into a brief but provoking treatise on the value of the artist’s prolific time in Maryland. Consequently, Sobel asserts that Still’s late works ought to be considered some of his best.

The first three upstairs galleries are not part of The Late Works exhibition, but they prime visitors for the title show. The rooms chronicle Still’s work pre-1961, from his regionalism of the 1920s-30s, through his elongated forms of the Depression years, and into the accelerated Abstract Expressionism of the 1940s and 50s for which he is best known. Familiar paintings like PH-247 from 1951 (affectionately known as “Big Blue”) appear in the third gallery to introduce Still’s characteristic verticality and intensity of color and line.

A view of Clyfford Still’s PH-442, 1964, on display as part of the exhibition The Late Works: Clyfford Still in Maryland. Image by Madeleine Boyson. — A view of Clyfford Still’s *PH-442*, 1964, on display as part of the exhibition *The Late Works: Clyfford Still in Maryland*. Image by Madeleine Boyson.

Against this backdrop, the first gallery of The Late Works—and one of its best—appears even more stunning, bright, and open. The glowing, “reductive” paintings in this room present a striking departure from the headier pieces in the previous, windowless galleries. [1] Here sunlight filters through CSM’s iconic egg-crate ceiling onto four large works painted in the years just after Still’s critical move to Maryland. [2] In each, bare canvases punctured by swatches of color demonstrate what Sobel calls a fresh “economy of imagery.” [3] PH-442 (1964) exemplifies this restart in Still’s career. After moving from New York to escape the idiosyncratic mid-century art world, the painter scrutinized basic tenets of space, figure-ground composition, and color in his own work, best seen in PH-442’s punch of sherbet orange against an exposed ground. The first room cleanses the visitor’s palate and reveals how these works refreshed another, metaphorical palette: Still’s “back to basics” experimentation of the early 1960s prepared him to reconsider familiar forms for the rest of his life.

Clyfford Still, PH-892, 1973, oil on canvas, 93.5 x 155 inches. Image courtesy of the Clyfford Still Museum. © City and County of Denver-ARS, NY. — Clyfford Still, *PH-892*, 1973, oil on canvas, 93.5 x 155 inches. Image courtesy of the Clyfford Still Museum. © City and County of Denver-ARS, NY.

In the second and third Late Works galleries, evidence of these heavier, more recognizable mosaics make innovative reappearances. Both rooms explore how Still reconceptualized his former expressionism into an extended range of colors with more energy and enlarged, columnar forms while living in Maryland. The earthy siennas, ochres, and orange of PH-892 (1973) show the artist experimenting heavily with robust tones. Here too the once-familiar “lifelines” of Still’s Abstract Expressionism break, swell, and even explode to represent vital earthly forces and fundamental movement.

A sampling of the works on paper by Clyfford Still that are part of the exhibition The Late Works: Clyfford Still in Maryland. Image by Madeleine Boyson. — A sampling of the works on paper by Clyfford Still that are part of the exhibition *The Late Works: Clyfford Still in Maryland*. Image by Madeleine Boyson.

In his virtual tour of the exhibition available on the museum website, Sobel notes that Still realized a new height of creativity in the early 1970s. To illustrate how the artist generated such bold and exploratory work during the Maryland period, the fourth gallery displays nearly all of the exhibition’s drawings, most of which are pastel on colored construction paper. Sobel emphasizes that while these works were not seen by the public until after Still’s death, they were a vital part of the artist’s practice and a forum for working through aesthetic problems. [4] More than half the drawings of Still’s entire career were completed while living in Maryland, and the room functions as an encyclopedia of the artist’s use of experimental line, color, and proportions during these years.

Clyfford Still, PH-843, 1972, oil on canvas, 76 x 59.75 inches. Image courtesy of the Clyfford Still Museum. © City and County of Denver-ARS, NY. — Clyfford Still, *PH-843*, 1972, oil on canvas, 76 x 59.75 inches. Image courtesy of the Clyfford Still Museum. © City and County of Denver-ARS, NY.

Considering that the number of pieces shown in The Late Works comprises a mere approximate 5% of the artist’s total output of the time, the exhibition still manages to highlight a few of Still’s more unrestrained artistic inquiries. The fifth gallery briefly attempts to show what Sobel calls the artist’s “roads not taken.” [5] An exquisite illustration of these unique pieces is PH-843, in which a red, sun-like form is cradled by a dark and craggy ground. The painting is surprisingly scenic in its allusions to the essential life forces Still sought to portray in previous abstractions, but the painter still plays with space by introducing a shard of bare canvas at the bottom left corner.

The sixth and final gallery focuses solely on the artist’s output of the late-1970s, in the years just before Still’s death from colon cancer in 1980. The sparing canvases return, this time replacing swatches of color for feathered brush strokes. Even some of Still’s anthropomorphic lines like those seen in his Depression-era work return, as in PH-1082 (1978), suggesting that the artist has come full circle in more than one respect.

Clyfford Still, PH-1098, 1979, oil on canvas, 91 x 70 inches. Image courtesy of the Clyfford Still Museum. © City and County of Denver-ARS, NY. — Clyfford Still, *PH-1098*, 1979, oil on canvas, 91 x 70 inches. Image courtesy of the Clyfford Still Museum. © City and County of Denver-ARS, NY.

It is in this last gallery that one best perceives the urgency of Still’s late work. Marked by the familiar expressiveness of the artist’s long career, the paintings and drawings here speak to his eternal pursuit of authenticity. Indeed the Maryland period in its entirety may be, as Sobel asserts, the best example of Still’s impulse to consistently break new ground, even with the inevitable end in sight. The “flickering restlessness” of the artist’s last ever painting (PH-1098, 1979) embodies this driving force, and an audio clip by Still from the period best sums it up: “Too short is the time to execute it, to accomplish it—to accomplish more than what a man can do in his own lifetime. For the potential of possibilities are infinite. [6]

For a virtual tour of the exhibition led by curator Dean Sobel head to https://clyffordstillmuseum.org/exhibitions/the-late-works-clyfford-still-in-maryland/. For short audio clips by Clyfford Still from the Maryland period gathered especially for this exhibition, visit https://soundcloud.com/clyffordstill/sets/the-late-works-clyfford-still-in-maryland-audio.

Madeleine Boyson is an independent writer, curator, lecturer, and artist located in Denver, Colorado. Her scholarship is concentrated American modernism and (dis)ability studies, including issues of care and dependency as well as the wholeness of the body. She has a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Art History and History from the University of Denver.

[1] According to the exhibition wall text.

[2] The Clyfford Still Museum was designed by Brad Cloepfil and Allied Works Architecture and completed in 2011. For more information, visit https://alliedworks.com/projects/clyfford-still-museum.

[3] Virtual tour, https://youtu.be/zVF6pYeaA5U. See also wall text.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.

[6] According to the exhibition wall text; Clyfford Still, “TheLateWorksSection1,” Soundcloud, https://soundcloud.com/clyffordstill/sets/the-late-works-clyfford-still-in-maryland-audio.