Lot 27: CLYFFORD STILL

PROPERTY FROM THE COLLECTION OF DR. AND MRS. JEFFREY ZISSU

1904-1980
UNTITLED (FEAR)

26 1/4 x 20 in. 66.6 x 50.8 cm.

signed and dated 45

oil on paper

PROVENANCE

Estate of Betty Parsons, New York (acquired directly from the artist)
Christie's, New York, Contemporary Art from the Estate of Betty Parsons, November 9, 1983, lot 324
Maxwell Davidson Gallery, New York
Private Collection, Chicago (acquired from the above in 1984)
C&M Arts, New York
SBC Communications, San Antonio (acquired from the above in 1995)
Martha Parrish & James Reinish, Inc., New York
Acquired by the present owners from the above

EXHIBITED

New York, Finch College Museum of Art, Betty Parsons' Private Collection, March - April 1968, cat. no. 151
Bloomfield Hills, Cranbrook Academy of Art; Memphis, Brooks Memorial Art Gallery, Betty Parsons' Private Collection, September - December 1968, cat. no. 91
Montclair, New Jersey, Montclair Art Museum, Selections from the Betty Parsons' Collection, January - February 1972, cat. no. 37
Ithaca, Cornell University, Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art; Tokyo, Seibu Museum of Art; New York, Whitney Museum of American Art, Abstract Expressionism: the Formative Years, March - December 1978, p. 128, cat. no. 138, illustrated
New York, Rosa Esman Gallery, Curator's Choice: a Tribute to Dorothy Miller, 1982

LITERATURE

Irving Sandler, The Triumph of American Painting, New York, 1970, p. 159, fig. no. 12-2, illustrated
Laura Carey Martin, American Images: The SBC Collection of Twentieth-Century American Art, New York, 1996, pl. 63, p. 134, illustrated in color

NOTE

``By 1941, space and figure in my canvases had been resolved into a total psychic entity, freeing me from the limitations of each, yet fusing into an instrument bounded only by the limits of my energy and intuition. My feeling of freedom was now absolute and infinitely exhilarating.''

Clyfford Still, 1963

In statements about his work, Still referred to painting as an ``instrument'' and believed that art was a total idea, encompassing life and death, freedom and subjugation. Still saw art as influential in society and it was the artist's responsibility to use the instrument of paint as a confrontation with his inner self and with society as a whole. Like Mark Rothko and Barnett Newman, Still considered art to have a transformative potential that could impact the public in transcendent and deeply emotive ways. Still sought to achieve the ecstatic through primal forms that abandoned the human figure as subject matter, leaving the human gesture of paint to signify the human presence in art. In the mid-1940s, with works such as Untitled (Fear), Still arrived at his unique mature style of abstraction that achieved a fusion of color and form that aimed at momentous content and sublime beauty.

By eliminating figuration or narrative intent from his compositions, Still orchestrated his strokes and surfaces toward his real subject matter, which is the dramatic interaction of painted forms and color harmonies. His jutting forms and muscular shards of color are redolent with a sense of crescendo within an organic formation that fills the picture plane and intimates a continuation beyond. Still's forms and painterly expression were in perfect sync with his foreboding and unusual palette. Still, in an acknowledgement of Edmund Burke's theory of color, employed melancholic colors such as black, brown or deep purple to access the Sublime, yet he also knew the value of expanding his palette to include the lighter colors of orange, red or yellow to animate the composition and increase its expressiveness. In Untitled (Fear), the counterpoints of color - the flickering red, touch of blue, outlines of white and wisps of yellow - harmonize with the more somber ground, and fulfill the artist's intent to highlight the paradox of light within dark in which radiance is a means of revelation of the Sublime.