Fine Art

Clyfford Still

A founder and leading figure of Abstract Impressionism and
color field painting, Clyfford Still was born November 30, 1904
and died June 27, 1980. The Abstract Impressionist movement,
a dynamic new approach to painting, took root and flourished
in the years immediately after World War II. Some of the other
notable artists deeply involved in the development of this
powerful art form were Jackson Pollack, Mark Rothko, Robert
Motherwell, Franz Klein, Phillip Guston and Barnett Newman.

All of these artists had very different approaches to their work
and developed highly individual styles. However, there were
common characteristics that marked Abstract Impressionism.
That is, the forms were quite abstract, the brushwork very
expressive and the scale large and imposing.

Still’s early work (pre 1938) was representational as evidenced
by the painting associated with the construction of the Grand
Coulee Dam which is depicted in the accompanying video.
Although this work is, indeed, representational it none-the-less
shows early signs of Still’s transition from a representational
style to Abstract Impressionism. Pay particular attention to
the boldness of the brushwork and the color. The period
1938-1942 saw Still take the lead in the movement in making
the transition to the abstractness of the forms, the presence of
rich color fields and the use of expressive brush strokes in
his paintings.

After first teaching at Washington State University from 1935-
1941, where the artwork depicted in the accompanying video
was painted, Still taught at several different art schools and
universities. He then moved to New York City where he lived for
most of the 1950’s at the height of the Abstract Impressionist
movement. Despite several well received solo exhibitions and
relationships with major art galleries, he became disenchanted
with the commercial art establishment in the early 1950s.
Subsequently, Still moved to Maryland where he and his second
wife remained until his passing in 1980.

At full fruition, Still’s work largely consisted of abstract
formations of different colors and surfaces that were placed
in a variety of adjacent formations. His formations were
developed in complex ways with jagged flashes of color
placed in thick impasto. The result was a shimmering, subtle
effect with shades of color on the surface of the painting.
Still’s mature work suggests, in a very mysterious way, natural
forms and phenomena. Using one’s imagination, one can
see caverns and their components of stone flows, drip-formed
stalagmites and other wondrous formations. Black and yellow
with patches of white and small amounts of red along with
dark blue and purple are found in his work.

At his passing, all non public domain works were withdrawn from both scholarly and public study and view and privately housed. This unfortunate situation will be remedied when the Clyfford Still museum opens in Denver, Colorado in 2010. The body of works available for view and study will consist of over 2400 paintings and works on paper that will span the artist’s career. Still’s complete collection of sketchbooks, notebooks, journals, library and other resources will also be housed at the museum.

Fine Art – John Henry Twachtman

Fine Art is a term used to describe a painting or drawing, printmaking, photography, illustration or sculpture that is primarily intended for aesthetics as opposed to utility. The term does not describe the quality of the work but frequently rather a classic or academic approach to a particular art form usually in a more traditional manner. For the most part crafts are excluded from the definition. The public, in general, tends to consider fine art to consist of painting, drawing and sculpture. More broadly, fine art does, in fact, include creative photography, and illustration. Here in the series of videos that follow and the descriptive blogs that accompany them, we’ll focus primarily upon painting, drawing, art photography, and sculpture. Initially, we’ll focus upon paintings of North American and European origin because we are more likely to encounter them and they will be of greater interest to us.

One of the historical purposes of painting was to provide an accurate record of the world observed by the artist who created the painting. The artists who created the paintings we have come to appreciate from the mid 1800s on were no longer constrained by the necessity to create an accurate historical record but rather could create in an unconstrained stylistic sense, conceptual if you will. Hence, impressionism, postimpressionism, Fauvism, expressionism, cubism and Dadaism and their subsets arose in sequential order. Although none of them fully or mainly supplanted the styles that went before them.

The video we are presenting today is of an American painting by John Henry Twachtman, one of America’s greatest landscape painters. Twachtman showed great skill in depicting natural scenery such as snow upon tree branches and other winter scenes. Further, he was a master of color values. One of the founders in 1898 of “The 10” a group of American artists dissatisfied with professional art associations, he painted on the East coast of the United States from Connecticut north to Massachusetts.

Twachtman was born in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1853 and trained initially under Frank Duveneck in Cincinnati. He then continued his training in Europe, specifically in Munich, Germany. There he associated with William Merritt Chase and Frank Duveneck. He returned to America briefly but then moved to Paris, France in 1883 where he further studied art. Although not a major commercial success his work was excellent and endures today. Felled by a brain aneurysm he died in 1902 at age 49. Twachtman’s works are found in numerous major museums including the Museum of Fine Art in Boston, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC.

To view the video click on the link below.