Page 54 - Studio International - February 1970

poetic and not based on empirical realities. which is the first large-scale Still exhibition jagged fissures. There was absolutely no
Even his early use of the palimpsest effect here in eighteen years, amply demonstrates hidden axis in his compositions that deter-
indicates it. In mature works, he definitely the total departure and its effects. Obviously mined the superficie. It was all there on top.
seeks to achieve a duality of centrifugal and Still was not interested in the nuances of form Behind, the abyss into which our glimpses
centripetal forces. At times, the forms dubbed and space, and the consideration of the were sudden and shocking. On these un-
by Breton as 'hybrid' seem to fly out to the modern cubist legacy which haunted Gorky. breathing, opaque surfaces the eye would
edges where they linger in suspension, and at What he wanted to do, and what he ultima- travel apprehensively, ticking off their vast-
times, they seem compelled toward a central tely did, was to forget all that. To him, there ness and purveying vague metaphorical
source. Often, that source appears to be a was a strength in isolation. He saw himself as images to the brain. The paintings translated
disguised lamp or candle, or some instrument a moral exemplar, an avatar of purely as rugged, disturbing and very remote from
of light. The compartmented planes of the American painting. His attitudes, so often the characteristics of the hated (by Still at any
earlier drawings disappear, and in their stead, quoted, were to be vastly influential on the rate) painterly tradition.
there are spaces into which half-described abstract expressionist generation. Painting for All these years later, the paintings still seem
forms dip and glide suggesting vast inter- Still had little to do with the traditional very uncompromising, and irritating. And
relations. The power of suggestion is always problems of how to create forms and spaces strong. Those furry, intermediate edges are
utilized by Gorky whose quick sensibilities on a two-dimensional surface. It had a lot to gothic, fussy, ornate and yet, within the
sought the most accurate reductions of visual do with how to project a set of gritty Yankee dense foreplane, they work. Still's most
experience possible. Thus, along with the values, strongly tinged with rebellious puri- recent paintings are far more ingratiating,
abstractions from nature and the human tanism, and firmly set in a collision course with with large areas of canvas exposed, light
figure that are undeniably present, there are established bourgeois conceptions of what a colours and airy transitions. But they too are
abstractions that symbolize movement (the painting should be. His obsession with disconcerting. There is no standard that can
dotted line for instance). `individual freedom' was so profound that he be applied to them, except within the terms
Gorky's deep absorption in drawing, and his was able to eschew most of the received ideas Still himself establishes.
unrelenting search for precision, seems very about painting without a twinge. Although Unquestionably, Still has proved his rugged
remote from current concerns. The pace of no one except perhaps a few of his oldest individualism and his personal freedom. He
his evolution is itself an old-fashioned fact. The students knows very much about the figura- has also been a powerful eminence grise in
values of his period, a period romantically tive paintings of the early 1930s, I would guess American painting whose force is still very
inclined to revere drawing and painting as a that they had little to do with the kind of apparent. The totality, or rather, the integ-
lifelong quest, have lost their force. Yet, many draughtsmanship that moved Gorky. Of those rity of his commitment to the statement of his
will undoubtedly find satisfaction in this works that are known of the late 1930s and own freedom is, again, a value that seems to
record of a painter's exclusive preoccupation early 1940s, I should say that Still was a mal- fade in subsequent generations. q
with his art. habile draughtsman and a clumsy painter DORE ASHTON
In another large exhibition of a man of whose departure from figurative and symbolic
4
Gorky's generation who is alive and still motifs was felicitous. They were not for him. Arshile Gorky
working, one can see that even in the years of Once he moved away from those echoes of Composition 1931-32
Gorky's major development, his traditional North-west Indian and Mexican symbolism, Ink
22 x 30 in.
methods of self-training were already obso- Still immediately established the unique mode Courtesy M. Knoedler & Co. Inc., New York
lete. Clyfford Still was as far from the nature of dealing with paint and canvas that remains 5
Clyfford Still
of Gorky's sensibility as can be imagined. His to this day his trademark. For him, the surface 1960 1960
Oil on canvas
large exhibition at the MARLBOROUGH GALLERY was to be a densely and rudely covered plain 89 x 684 in.
which includes works from 1943 to 1966, and that was interrupted by flashes of light or Courtesy Marlborough-Gerson Gallery Inc., New York
74