Untitled 1957

Curator: Standing before us is an untitled work by Clyfford Still, dating back to 1957. Editor: It feels…violent, somehow. Like a landscape torn asunder. The harsh juxtaposition of colors creates such a stark impression. I’m immediately struck by the impasto—that heavy build-up of paint. You can almost feel the force he used to apply it. Curator: That visual disruption is quite characteristic of Still, isn’t it? I see this black void looming—almost like a spiritual abyss—against that almost luminous field of yellow. Do you think Still meant to communicate dread? Is that black, rupturing field acting as an eclipse of the soul? Editor: I wouldn't discount that reading, but it also draws my eye to how the materials themselves are performing. See the texture of the paint in that top red area? It looks almost scraped back. It feels almost crude—a real focus on the materiality and labor behind this abstraction. Curator: It's as though he’s excavating something from the subconscious, wouldn’t you say? Still seems to access a place prior to reason through gesture and colour, with roots that lead directly to archetypal darkness, maybe to a primordial memory. Editor: Or, perhaps he's simply engaging with the historical moment of abstract expressionism. There’s the influence of wartime, an accelerated industrial era; maybe the gesture on the canvas becomes a raw material response to these forces. It's not just psychological—it's of the earth! Oil paint and canvas—these things cost resources, and they speak of the social conditions in which he painted it. Curator: Maybe Still sought something more eternal. He was so critical of the art market. That void pulls on deeply ingrained symbols of what frightens and confounds us. Editor: Agreed. And in its violent expression of process, this ‘Untitled’ work by Clyfford Still exposes both the struggle for form, and the physical processes of artistic production. Curator: Yes, leaving us to grapple with something profoundly disturbing and beautifully raw, almost excavated from within.