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Auction archive: Lot number 9

Clyfford Still

Estimate
US$12,000,000 - US$18,000,000
Price realised:
US$13,690,000
Auction archive: Lot number 9

Clyfford Still

Estimate
US$12,000,000 - US$18,000,000
Price realised:
US$13,690,000
Beschreibung:

9 Clyfford Still Untitled oil on canvas 55 1/4 x 41 3/4 in. (140.3 x 106 cm.) Painted circa 1948-1949.
Provenance Collection of Edward and Edie Dugmore, Minneapolis (acquired directly from the artist) Estate of Edward Dugmore Minneapolis (by descent) Manny Silverman Gallery, Los Angeles Edward Kitchen, Houston James Corcoran Gallery, Los Angeles Acquired from the above by the present owner Video Hellfire Rising: Looking at Clyfford Still “You can turn the lights out the paintings will carry their own fire.” Our Worldwide Co-Head of 20th Century & Contemporary Art Robert Manley quotes and expounds upon the work of Clyfford Still whose 'Untitled' canvas from 1948-1949 is a highlight of our upcoming Evening Sale. Catalogue Essay “You can turn the lights out. The paintings will carry their own fire.” Clyfford Still 1960 Dr. David Anfam is an independent art historian, curator and Senior Consulting Curator at the Clyfford Still Museum, Denver. He is the preeminent authority on Abstract Expressionism, having most recently co-curated the current Abstract Expressionism exhibition at The Royal Academy in London. A Touch of Hellfire: Clyfford Still’s Untitled, circa 1948-1949 With the opening of the Clyfford Still Museum in Denver in November 2011, the full scale of the artist’s achievement at last became clear. In fact, through this final gesture the notoriously reclusive Still effectively rewrote the history of modern American art from beyond the grave. Holding more than 95% of Still’s oeuvre, the collection contains some 850 paintings and over 2,500 works on paper. Chronologically, the first canvas dates from 1920 and the last pastel was executed in 1980, the year of Still’s death. This output extending over precisely six decades restores Still, after years when his reputation went into eclipse, to his rightful place as one of the foremost pioneers of Abstract Expressionism. The present untitled canvas from 1948-49 represents a moment when its maker – based then in San Francisco and teaching at the California School of Fine Arts – was at the height of his powers. From his earliest years on the prairies, Still associated the vertical with the assertion of a living presence amid what he called the “awful bigness” of the land dominated by its seemingly endless horizontality. During the 1920s and 1930s upright protagonists, massive monoliths and other ominous motifs embodied this vertical impulse. By the early 1940s, these vectors coalesced into macabre and increasingly shredded anatomies. The veritable talons of black and ocher in the leftward section of Untitled are the final residues of this simultaneous apotheosis and destruction of the body. Furthermore, lest such readings appear implausible, we need only look to other canvases of the period, such as PH-200. (1948, Clyfford Still Museum, Denver) There, leaping black silhouettes (at right) and three horizontal marks (at lower left) suggest the faintest echoes of a figure and its rib cage, albeit torn asunder by ubiquitous crimson expanses. A similar animism is evident in the analogous reds of Untitled. Manifesting both dire emptiness and chromatic fullness, this encompassing hue hints at Still’s old fixation on the horizontal, decimating wastes of the prairies – now charged with a fiery magnitude – even as it challenges the rising, clawing passages to its left. If black is traditionally a color of death in Western culture, while red suggests ardor and vitality, then we are facing a rare synthesis wherein the two intermingle. Aptly, in 1950 Still stated that his pictures were “life and death merging in fearful union.” The mordant textures of Untitled, applied fiercely with the palette knife, give tactile impact to this merger. Likewise, the painting’s chromatic heat and concomitant luminosity lend it more than a touch of hell fire, a reminder that in 1946 Still described his work as being of “the Earth, the Damned, and of the Recreated.” Another factor that distinguishes Untitled is that Still – by that time living in New York – gave it to Edward Dugmore in 1951. Dugmore had been on

Auction archive: Lot number 9
Auction:
Datum:
16 Nov 2016
Auction house:
Phillips
New York
Beschreibung:

9 Clyfford Still Untitled oil on canvas 55 1/4 x 41 3/4 in. (140.3 x 106 cm.) Painted circa 1948-1949.
Provenance Collection of Edward and Edie Dugmore, Minneapolis (acquired directly from the artist) Estate of Edward Dugmore Minneapolis (by descent) Manny Silverman Gallery, Los Angeles Edward Kitchen, Houston James Corcoran Gallery, Los Angeles Acquired from the above by the present owner Video Hellfire Rising: Looking at Clyfford Still “You can turn the lights out the paintings will carry their own fire.” Our Worldwide Co-Head of 20th Century & Contemporary Art Robert Manley quotes and expounds upon the work of Clyfford Still whose 'Untitled' canvas from 1948-1949 is a highlight of our upcoming Evening Sale. Catalogue Essay “You can turn the lights out. The paintings will carry their own fire.” Clyfford Still 1960 Dr. David Anfam is an independent art historian, curator and Senior Consulting Curator at the Clyfford Still Museum, Denver. He is the preeminent authority on Abstract Expressionism, having most recently co-curated the current Abstract Expressionism exhibition at The Royal Academy in London. A Touch of Hellfire: Clyfford Still’s Untitled, circa 1948-1949 With the opening of the Clyfford Still Museum in Denver in November 2011, the full scale of the artist’s achievement at last became clear. In fact, through this final gesture the notoriously reclusive Still effectively rewrote the history of modern American art from beyond the grave. Holding more than 95% of Still’s oeuvre, the collection contains some 850 paintings and over 2,500 works on paper. Chronologically, the first canvas dates from 1920 and the last pastel was executed in 1980, the year of Still’s death. This output extending over precisely six decades restores Still, after years when his reputation went into eclipse, to his rightful place as one of the foremost pioneers of Abstract Expressionism. The present untitled canvas from 1948-49 represents a moment when its maker – based then in San Francisco and teaching at the California School of Fine Arts – was at the height of his powers. From his earliest years on the prairies, Still associated the vertical with the assertion of a living presence amid what he called the “awful bigness” of the land dominated by its seemingly endless horizontality. During the 1920s and 1930s upright protagonists, massive monoliths and other ominous motifs embodied this vertical impulse. By the early 1940s, these vectors coalesced into macabre and increasingly shredded anatomies. The veritable talons of black and ocher in the leftward section of Untitled are the final residues of this simultaneous apotheosis and destruction of the body. Furthermore, lest such readings appear implausible, we need only look to other canvases of the period, such as PH-200. (1948, Clyfford Still Museum, Denver) There, leaping black silhouettes (at right) and three horizontal marks (at lower left) suggest the faintest echoes of a figure and its rib cage, albeit torn asunder by ubiquitous crimson expanses. A similar animism is evident in the analogous reds of Untitled. Manifesting both dire emptiness and chromatic fullness, this encompassing hue hints at Still’s old fixation on the horizontal, decimating wastes of the prairies – now charged with a fiery magnitude – even as it challenges the rising, clawing passages to its left. If black is traditionally a color of death in Western culture, while red suggests ardor and vitality, then we are facing a rare synthesis wherein the two intermingle. Aptly, in 1950 Still stated that his pictures were “life and death merging in fearful union.” The mordant textures of Untitled, applied fiercely with the palette knife, give tactile impact to this merger. Likewise, the painting’s chromatic heat and concomitant luminosity lend it more than a touch of hell fire, a reminder that in 1946 Still described his work as being of “the Earth, the Damned, and of the Recreated.” Another factor that distinguishes Untitled is that Still – by that time living in New York – gave it to Edward Dugmore in 1951. Dugmore had been on

Auction archive: Lot number 9
Auction:
Datum:
16 Nov 2016
Auction house:
Phillips
New York
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