The two personae of Clyfford Still

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Mark Rawlinson talks to David Anfam about this caustic yet sometimes charming man and brilliant artist

Following the opening of the Clyfford Still Museum in Denver, Colorado in November 2011 Mark Rawlinson interviewed David Anfam, an expert on Still and curator of  a small ‘Vincent/Clyfford’ installation which will run at the Museum  from 14 September 2012 to 6 January 2013.

Mark Rawlinson: Could you tell us more about Still and his work?

David Anfam: Quite simply, Clyfford Still was one of the two or three key figures of the movement that we call – for want of a better word, I guess – Abstract Expressionism. But, partly because of his intransigent personality and the singular character of his art, in recent years he hadn't achieved the same kind of celebrity status that attaches to, say, Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko. So I believe the time is now perfect for him to re-emerge from the eclipse, and particularly to reach a new, younger audience.

MR:  What kind of a person was Still, then? And why do you feel his work has been eclipsed by that of Pollock and Rothko?

DA: With some artists it's possible to dissociate the life and the work. This definitely does not strike me as being the case with Clyfford Still. On the contrary, the two seem inextricably intertwined: the intensity, the extremism, the ascetic rigour and dark tenor of the man is made manifest throughout the work. On the other hand, I think it's crucial to differentiate between the ‘public’ and the ‘private’ Still because he was adept at switching between the two.

MR:  So, how best to differentiate these two, distinct, personae?

DA: Still's public persona has become the stuff of legend. Suffice it to say that he made the other so-called ‘irascible’ Abstract Expressionists seem like characters out of Beatrix Potter. The record is full of his pungent diatribes and caustic acts against what he saw as the ‘Art Establishment’. For example, he denounced the Museum of Modern Art as ‘the great gas chamber of culture on 53rd Street’ and slashed one of his paintings out of its frame with a knife because he thought the collector no longer had an ethical right to own it.

Personally, I see this kind of attitude as a rhetorical one – in the most serious sense of the word – that was meant to clear an ideological space for his own work. Practically speaking, though, the problem is that such prickliness had a domino effect in terms of his profile in the art world. Basically, the latter turned against him in reaction and he became an outsider, whereas Pollock and Rothko rose to more or less posthumous stardom.

The flipside of this situation was that, in private, Still was a totally different person, though not too many people are aware of this. There are reports dating from as early as the 1930s attesting to his genius as a teacher, his sensitivity with his students and his fundamental decency towards those whom he saw as kindred spirits. Later on, one university professor (who was himself pretty erudite) described Still to me as the most intelligent person he had ever met, while others say he had a good sense of humour, could be very warm, charming, and so forth. In fact, he even invited his teacher from the mid-1930s in Washington State to the opening of his retrospective at the Met in 1979. Here is a man with a long memory, a great skill at making enemies, an old-fashioned faith in human dignity and someone who defended the artist to the hilt. But also someone who had a sword for those whom he thought betrayed the cause.

MR: With this in mind, then, does the new museum have any specific aims with regard to the public and private Still? As an affirmation of or effort to rehabilitate Still’s public ‘intransigence’, for example?

DA:   Single artist museums are tricky enterprises because their subjects exist in a potential vacuum. In this respect, the [Clyfford Still Museum] CSM is in principle especially challenged since the terms of the donation were that no other artists’ work can be shown there and nor can his be lent elsewhere. Fortunately, though, the holdings are so deep – 94 per cent of Still’s entire output – that there’s a great range to explore. In fact, in May there were new things to see in what was the opening installation.

One mission of the CSM is to reveal diverse unknown facets of his oeuvre: the numerous drawings, the figurative paintings, the pastels, and so forth. Also, the Denver Art Museum (DAM) is right next door, opening up possibilities of concurrent exhibitions that will mesh with what’s on the walls at the CSM. For example, this autumn the DAM is doing a van Gogh show and it so happens that Still was extremely interested in the Dutchman’s art. So I’m pleased to be curating a small ‘Vincent/Clyfford’ installation to hopefully shed light on the connections between the two.

The creation of a research centre in the near future will further expand the CSM’s purview, relating Still’s achievement to a wide cultural context, especially since his career spanned over half a century and he himself was interested in everything from Beethoven to baseball and William Blake. Lastly, there is an archive that remains sealed: once unlocked, I’d be very surprised if it did not yield all sorts of insights into the relationship between the private and public man. In the end, however, it is up to the public to judge the example that Still set.

MR: The CSM is worth a visit, then?

DA: You bet!