Clyfford Still: Paint

“I felt it necessary to evolve entirely new concepts (of form and space and paintings) and postulate them in an instrument that could continue to shake itself free from dialectical perversions. The dominant ones, Cubism and Expressionism, only reflected the attitudes of power or spiritual debasement of the individual.”

Clyfford Still

Clyfford Still, interview with Ti Grace Sharpless, 1963; as quoted in Abstract Expressionism Creators and Critics, edited by Clifford Ross, Abrams Publishers New York 1990, p. 200
1960s

Painting

“I am not an action painter. Each painting is an act. The result of action and the fulfillment of action... No painting stops with itself, is complete of itself. It is a continuation of previous paintings and is renewed in successive ones..”

Clyfford Still

Gallery Notes, Allbright-Knox Art Gallery, Vol. 24 summer 1961 pp. 9-14; as quoted in Abstract Expressionism Creators and Critics, edited by Clifford Ross, Abrams Publishers New York 1990, p. 197
1960s

Success , Painting

“As for 'taste' as a criterion of painting I find that it is most frequently applied to work that is essentially insensitive, brutal or vulgar beyond question. Could it now be a term with political undertones to seduce, or cover profounder motives of exploitation? I propose it be kept to the wine cellar. There it deceives no one but him who over-indulges.”

Clyfford Still

Clyfford Still, in an interview with Ti Grace Sharpless, 1963; as quoted in Abstract Expressionism Creators and Critics, edited by Clifford Ross, Abrams Publishers New York 1990, p. 201
1960s

Motivation , Question , Wine , Painting

“Through them [his paintings] I breathe again.”

Clyfford Still

Clyfford Still (1950) as quoted in Abstract Expressionism, Davind Anfam, Thames and Hudson Ltd London, 1990, p. 145 : Statement for his 1950 show about his paintings
1950s

Painting

“.. the light suggests no particular time of day or night [in the paintings of Paul Cézanne ]; it is not appropriated from morning or afternoon, sunlight or shadow.”

Clyfford Still

1950s
Source: Abstract Expressionism, Davind Anfam, Thames and Hudson Ltd London, 1990; p. 145

Light , Time , Painting , Night

“I do not have a comic or tragic period in any real sense. I have always painted dark pictures; always some light pictures. I will probably go on doing so... Orchestral. My work in its entirety is like a symphony in which each painting has its part.”

Clyfford Still

Gallery Notes, Allbright-Knox Art Gallery, Vol. 24 summer 1961 pp. 9-14; as quoted in Abstract Expressionism Creators and Critics, edited by Clifford Ross, Abrams Publishers New York 1990, p. 197
1960s

Sense , Light , Parting , Painting

“The observer usually will see what his fears and hopes and learning teach him to see. But if he can escape these demands that hold up a mirror to himself, then perhaps some of the implications of the work may be felt. But whatever is seen of felt it should be remembered that for me these paintings had to be something else. It is the price one has to pay for clarity when one’s means are honoured only as an instrument of seduction or assault.”

Clyfford Still

Letter to Dorothy Miller February 5, 1952; as quoted in Abstract Expressionism Creators and Critics, edited by Clifford Ross, Abrams Publishers New York 1990, p. 193
1950s

Fear , Hope , Learning , Painting

“[These are] not paintings in the usual sense, they are life and death merging in fearful union.”

Clyfford Still

Clyfford Still (ca. 1950) as quoted in Abstract Expressionism, Davind Anfam, Thames and Hudson Ltd London, 1990, p. 138: About his own work
1950s

Life , Death , Fear , Sense