Untitled 1948

Clyfford Still made this untitled painting with oil on canvas. I can imagine Still working on this, layering and scraping, maybe even wiping the paint to make the image appear. You know, it’s like he’s searching for something, not just depicting, but more like discovering. There’s a lot of exposed canvas, and just a few gestures: that almost gothic looking splotch of blue on top, and that orange blob on the bottom, like an earth formation that’s been broken and bruised. Then there’s a thin horizontal stroke that sort of connects the two. It reminds me of Guston’s paintings from the 70s, where the bare canvas shows, but it’s also like a more primitive de Kooning, where you can feel the hand and the body of the painter moving, and the process is very much on display. It’s all about the making of something, and not about something that's already been made. Still and his abstract expressionist buddies taught us to embrace ambiguity, didn't they?