Canadian and American Abstract Painting: Intersections in the Work of Clyfford Still and Kenneth Lochhead
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CANADIAN AND AMERICAN ABSTRACT PAINTING: INTERSECTIONS IN THE WORK OF CLYFFORD STILL AND KENNETH LOCHHEAD Katherine Meredith Clyfford Still is at once a legendary figure in the history of modern art, and an unknown painter whose oeuvre has been tightly restricted from public access. Those who do know his work are familiar with Still as a leader of the Abstract Expressionist movement, and associate the artist with his immense and colourful abstract canvases. Although these represent his most significant and influential works, what is constantly overlooked when discussing Still’s career is the fact that he spent most of his youth in rural Alberta, where he began to paint. Born in North Dakota in 1904, Still’s family moved to Bow Island, just outside of Edmonton, in 1911. He lived there until he attended college in Washington State, although he returned to Canada during the summers as well as regularly throughout the rest of his life. Little is known of this part of Still’s career. This is partly because Still was a very private person who hid from the public, and who usually refused to comment on any of his art, as well as the strict conditions on his estate, left by the artist following his death in 1980. At Still’s wishes, his estate remained hidden from public access until an American city was willing to build a museum dedicated to his art and archives. Consequently, for a very well-known artist of the twentieth century, there is little known of him, particularly during his early years as a figurative painter. In 2011, the Clyfford Still Museum in Denver, Colorado opened its doors to house and present this large collection. The museum contains over 94% of the artist’s work. Kenneth Lochhead was born in Ottawa in 1926. Lochhead studied at Queen’s University, the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, and the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia. His extensive ARTH 648B-2 Envisioning Digital and Virtual Forms of Exhibitions: The Curatorial Translation of Theory into Practice, 2012 study of art was complemented by trips to Europe and western Canada.1 He moved to Regina in 1950 to teach art at the University of Saskatchewan. Known for his colourful, geometric abstract works of the 1960s and 1970s, he has inspired generations of artists across Canada in the second half of the twentieth century. Because of his artwork, teaching, as well as his active role in the contemporary art world, he helped to give the Regina arts scene national status. This exhibition will compare the careers of Clyfford Still and Kenneth Lochhead, as two abstract artists active during the same time period, both of whom had strong ties with the Canadian Prairies. While the two artists are most renowned for their colourful, non-representational paintings, Still and Lochhead began with figurative paintings of landscapes and portraiture. The development of their styles will be compared and contrasted in the context of Post-War art, while noting Still and Lochhead’s relation to dominant art movements of the time in the United States. Since Clyfford Still is only ever considered alongside other American artists, this exhibition aims to expose the Canadian side of the painter, and show how Still’s work is not similar to American artists exclusively. ARTH 648B-2 Envisioning Digital and Virtual Forms of Exhibitions: The Curatorial Translation of Theory into Practice, 2012 The Formative Years: Arriving at Abstraction with the Influence of Cézanne Clyfford Still PH-619-5 1920 Oil on canvas Clyfford Still Museum ARTH 648B-2 Envisioning Digital and Virtual Forms of Exhibitions: The Curatorial Translation of Theory into Practice, 2012 Paul Cézanne The Bay of Marseilles, view from L'Estaque 1885 31 5/8 x 39 5/8 in. (80.2 x 100.6 cm) Oil on canvas Mr. and Mrs. Martin A. Ryerson Collection, The Art Institute of Chicago Accession Number: 1933.1116 http://www.artic.edu/aic/collections/artwork/16487 Paul Cézanne is considered one of the most influential artists of the nineteenth century and a major pioneer of modern painting. He is credited with bridging the gap between late nineteenth century Impressionism and early twentieth century Cubism.2 Generations of modern artists have affirmed their admiration of the painter; Matisse once proclaimed: “Cézanne, you see, is a sort of 3 God of painting.” He often inspired artists during their early careers, as they were developing ARTH 648B-2 Envisioning Digital and Virtual Forms of Exhibitions: The Curatorial Translation of Theory into Practice, 2012 their own style. His influence continues for twentieth century artists around the world, including Clyfford Still in the United States and Kenneth Lochhead in Canada. Clyfford Still, who began painting in 1920 at age sixteen in Bow Island, Alberta, shows influences of Cézanne in several ways. Because Still was a self-taught artist, he did not study Cézanne in studio art courses like many painters have. Rather, Still studied his work on his own time and in his art history classes, which led to him write his Master’s thesis in Art History on the artist in 1935, entitled “Cézanne: A Study in Evaluation.” In his thesis Still mentions what he admired about Cézanne, particularly how his forms were used for aesthetic function rather than as representational tools, and for his liberated use of colour. He praises Cézanne just as the early modern artists did, for being the founder of modern art: “For almost a third of a century Paul Cézanne has been the most influential figure in modern painting. His letters alone have formed the technical basis of one great modern school. He casually mentions geometric figures and another school is born.”4 While it is a known fact that Still greatly admired Cézanne, saying that Cézanne directly influenced Still’s work is a much more subjective claim. Still was ethically opposed to the idea of artists having influences, and claimed that he had none, stating, “My work is not influenced by anybody.”5 As well, Still’s artwork is highly original and often shows an assimilation of several artistic styles, therefore references to Cézanne are very subtle. This attitude of rejecting tradition and recognizing the artist as an autonomous figure belonged to the two artists. Still admired Cézanne’s character. Cézanne spoke on this topic, stating “the modern artist must forget 6 everything that came before.” ARTH 648B-2 Envisioning Digital and Virtual Forms of Exhibitions: The Curatorial Translation of Theory into Practice, 2012 In one of Still’s first landscapes of rural Alberta, PH-619-5 (1920), we see a grain elevator on an empty, flat plain. Thick brushstrokes suggest movement in the empty blue sky. The brushstrokes, palette and simplified geometric forms show similarities to Cézanne’s Impressionist period (1883-1885), such as his landscapes in l’Estaque, including The Bay of Marseilles, view from L'Estaque (1885). Both artists painted rural scenes with varied and thick brushstrokes, and yellow buildings with rigid, squared contours. ARTH 648B-2 Envisioning Digital and Virtual Forms of Exhibitions: The Curatorial Translation of Theory into Practice, 2012 Clyfford Still Untitled 1935 26 3/4 x 20 3/4 in. (67.9 x 52.7 cm) Oil on canvas Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, Joseph H. Hirshhorn Purchase Fund, 2001 Accession Number: 01.12 http://www.hirshhorn.si.edu/collection/hirshhorn-past-exhibitions/ - detail=http%3A//www.hirshhorn.si.edu/search-results/search-result- details/%3Fedan_search_value=01.12&collection=hirshhorn-past- exhibitionshttp://www.hirshhorn.si.edu/collection/hirshhorn ARTH 648B-2 Envisioning Digital and Virtual Forms of Exhibitions: The Curatorial Translation of Theory into Practice, 2012 Paul Cézanne The Boy with a Skull (Jeune homme à la tête de mort) 1896-1898 130.2 x 97.3 cm Oil on canvas The Barnes Foundation http://www.barnesfoundation.org/collections/art-collection/object/5209/young-man-and-skull- jeune-homme-a-la-tete-de-mort One major element that Clyfford Still admired of Cézanne and adopted himself was the recurring theme of distortion.7 Whereas Cézanne used distortion in a geometric, proto-Cubist fashion, Still painted elongated, misshaped figures in his path to abstraction through a regionalist style. Regionalism is a term applied to a group of American artists during the 1930s and early 1940s who depicted realistic scenes of life in the rural Midwest and the Deep South in the United ARTH 648B-2 Envisioning Digital and Virtual Forms of Exhibitions: The Curatorial Translation of Theory into Practice, 2012 States.8 Several of Still’s early works of rural Alberta bear resemblances to the Regionalists’ nostalgic paintings of small-town America. As Still’s work evolved, however, the figures in his scenes of farms and farm-workers become emaciated, tired and hunger-stricken, his characters usually placed in a dark and eerie setting. envisioning the people Still had witnessed in Alberta and Washington State during the Great Depression. This aspect of Still’s painting of the 1930s steer his work closer to that of the Social Realists. Popular in the United States and Canada during the 1920s and 30s, these were artists who drew attention to the everyday conditions of the working class and the poor, while criticizing the social structures that maintained these conditions.9 Still’s Untitled (1935), shows a face typical of Still’s work of the 1930s. The eyes consist of empty, black sockets, there is no nose, and the cheeks are bony and hollow with a straight black line for a mouth. The skull, resting on a limp hand, floats in front of a grey, hilly landscape. The figure, an overworked and starved labourer, references the Social-Realist aspect of Still’s work, while the distorted forms and dark, eerie landscape evokes a Surrealist style.