The Clyfford Still Museum: An Example Of A True American Innovator

     I am standing in front of a ginormous canvas covered by thick vertical lines of crimson and bright orange with dark black splotches of black intermixed.  Some may call this a failed attempt at a home improvement project, while others might call this a brilliant example of the eternal struggle of life and death.  It truly depends on your perspective and how you interpret the artists intentions.  This is the world of Abstract Impressionism and one of its founding fathers, Clyfford Still.  The Clyfford Still Museum was built in 2011 and show cases the works of this amazing innovator.  In fact, the museum possess over 2,000 pieces, which constitutes around 94 percent of the work that Clyfford Still produced over his life time.  This is the single largest collection of any major artist's work in the world.  The museum is a study in all things Clyfford Still, with an informative video about the artists life, an interactive displays that discuss the influencing factors that shaped his style and an extensive gallery, featuring his most profound work.  The upper gallery begins with his early period, which is heavily influenced by his agrarian upbringing in North Dakota.  Here you can see the metamorphosis of his style as it evolved.  It gradually changed from photo realism like Grant Wood and his iconic "American Gothic" to Cubism reminiscent of Picasso and his "Guernica" to the the final incarnation of Abstract Impressionism.  Similar to his contemporaries, the atrocities of World War II left him searching for a style to express the new era.  Still began to use form and design to represent his ideas and concepts.  He once described the dabs of paint and the nonsensical brush strokes as "my paintings have rising forms of vertical necessity of life dominating the horizon.  For such a land man must stand up right, if he would live.  And so born and become intrinsic this elemental characteristic of my life's work."  His style was so revolutionary and cutting edge, that Jackson Pollock once remarked that "compared to Clyfford Still, all other artists are pure academic."  To prove this point, Still began to utilize less and less canvas and consequentially making blank canvas an essential part of the composition.  By the end of his life, Clyfford Still was considered by most art critics as a true genius and thus in 1979 had the largest one man exhibition in art history at The Metropolitan Art Museum.  So if you are interested in experiencing the work of a true artistic master, than you should  come to The Clyfford Still Museum and be prepared to be amazed.

The Clyfford Still Museum:
https://www.clyffordstillmuseum.org/

Images of Clyfford Still's work:
http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=clyfford+still&qpvt=clyfford+still&FORM=IGRE

Images of Grant Wood, and the types of art that Still was rebelling against:
http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=Grant+Wood&qs=n&form=QBIR