Clyfford Still Joins the Denver Art Scene

One Comment by Wesley Stockton on 4th Jan 2012

Clyfford Still Joins the Denver Art Scene

Clyfford Still Museum. Source: Trueshow111 on Wikipedia

I wouldn’t consider myself the most knowledgeable person about art and art history, but I’d say I know enough to get by. I’ve been to the Denver Art Museum once or twice per year since I was quite young and have made it a point of visiting the Denver Museum of Contemporary Art just as frequently since its new building opened in 2007. So when I heard that a new museum was hitting the scene this year, one dedicated entirely to one artist, whom I had never heard of, my curiosity was piqued. I was just as interested as an appreciator of art as I was as a student of architecture.

Daniel Libeskind‘s addition in 2006 to Gio Ponti‘s 1970s castle-like Denver Art Museum that I had grown up with came at the beginnings of my architecture studies and was a nearly constant reference and example given by professors – both positively and negatively. The star architect designed, titanium clad, pointy and jagged Hamilton Wing, I must say was a daunting structure for a budding designer to visit. The vertigo inducing clashes of angled walls seemed to almost get in the way of the display of the DAMs growing collection. Libeskind’s plane crash of a building was followed the next year by David Adjaye‘s Museum of Contemporary Art, a building that did not fail to fill the architectural void that Libeskind’s Hamilton Wing had left. With clean lines and plain white walls lit by natural light through hidden skylights above, the galleries of the MCA stepped back and allowed the art to express itself. And yet, in spaces where art was not being displayed the architecture stepped back into the spotlight allowing visitors to discover unique moments hidden between its walls.

Denver Art Museum 1971. Source: Tijuana Brass on Wikipedia

With such a mixed bag of art museum architecture in the last decade I was apprehensive of the new Clyfford Still Museum. This past Christmas weekend, I was finally able to make it out to the concrete striped structure that Allied Works Architecture, headed by Brad Cloepfil, put together to honor the near full body of Clyfford Still‘s life’s work. Still, who died in 1980, was of the belief that art should be viewed in this way and I must say he may have been on to something. Widely considered as one of the most influential Expressionist painters by those in the art world, it was due to the fact that he would not allow any of his work to be exhibited unless the exhibition was dedicated entirely to his work and only his work that his name is wholly unknown to the general public. In his will, Still left nearly his whole body of work – around 2400 paintings, drawings, and sculptures – to any American city that would build a permanent home for their display. More than 30 years later, that permanent home was built and his amazingly powerful paintings are on display in Denver.

The verticality expressed in the board formed concrete and wood screens that make up the facade of the new museum speak directly to the character of Still’s art, which focuses heavily on the vertical. Once inside, this motif continues, but is accented by a punctured concrete ceiling that diffuses natural light throughout all of the gallery spaces from the skylights that make up a majority of the roof space above. Every now and then a splash of color or dark wood paneling offsets the concrete theme, just as splashes of color often punctuate stills mostly mono- and dichromatic later works. The lower level of the museum houses artifacts of Still’s life and give a history of his works, while the works themselves are housed in the second story galleries.

Still 1957-D1 Source: Wikipedia

At the top of the stairs, one is presented with the beginnings of Still’s work and then is set off on a journey through his life chronologically. His more representational beginnings focus mostly on figures and verticality – in distortions of hands and faces – with dark, morbid colors accented by bright splotches of primary colors. Disturbing, powerful, and beautiful. As one progresses into his later works, these themes seem to stay with him as he becomes more and more abstract. The final galleries are hung with huge, room sized paintings simply colored with a selection of hues in vertical cuts across sometimes blank canvas. So simple, and yet so large, these powerful works cannot all be taken in at once and one must stand and study them piece by piece, discovering the hidden gems that lie in wait between the fields of color.

After looking forward to seeing the architecture that would house Still’s works for so long and finally seeing it, I found myself left nearly speechless at the profoundness of his art. The building, when I focused on it, was an extremely well done work itself, but it was most successful in its ability to allow me to completely forget about it and be overcome by the power of Still’s paintings. Something that often times the MCA even failed to do, I can’t help but wonder if this is because Allied Works Architecture did such a good job, or if it was because Clyfford Still is really the master of Expressionist Art that he is claimed to be.