1947-H-No. 3 1947

Clyfford Still made this incredible oil on canvas, 1947-H-No. 3, sometime in the 1940s. It's a real face-off between black and off-white, like the painting itself is some kind of elemental struggle being enacted on the canvas. I can almost feel the weight of the black paint he laid down, thick and deliberate, against the pale ground. It's like he’s carving out shapes, not just painting them. I imagine him wrestling with the canvas, pushing and pulling the paint, trying to get whatever vision he had in his head *out* into the world. It's so physical, so raw, you know? Still was doing something radical, and you can see how that spirit influenced painters like Joan Mitchell. They're all in conversation, these painters, riffing off each other, trying to push the boundaries of what paint can do. It’s like they’re passing notes in class, trying to figure out how to break all the rules, together.